WebProNews

Outages just make people wistful for Tweeting

Despite service outages, the microblogging service Twitter continues to enjoy plenty of visits to its website.

Not even a hefty dose of downtime seems able to keep people from Twittering. In an age where storage space is an inexpensive commodity, and blogging services are abundant and free in many cases, lots of people keep expressing themselves via Twitter, 140 characters at a time.

Measurement firm Hitwise confirmed the popularity, comparing the traffic for the week that ended July 5th with the same period last year. The difference? A 500 percent increase this year.

That's about how much better Tiger Woods is than the average golfer, to go the sports analogy route. Compared to rival services like Plurk, Pownce, and FriendFeed, Twitter runs away from the microblogging field.

"The outages also haven’t stopped many visitors from coming back to the website," Hitwise's Heather Dougherty wrote.

"The share of returning traffic (defined as those who have visited the website during the past 30 days) has averaged 53% over the past four months and traffic referred from social networks has generated even more repeat visitors."

Even in their much-discussed (within tech blogs anyway) periods of no service, people seem to long for their Tweets. That's a good sign for the brand, which may add Summize to its server room at some point; modern impatient types don't put up with outages unless they really like the service.