Twitter the new Blogger?

In this week’s blog Iwill be developing my ideas on the topic of the impact social media is having on blogs.

In the first ever post i explored what the impact social media is having on blogs. http://digitext09.blogspot.com/2009/11/digital-cultures-lecture1.html
The aim in this blog is to see how many people are using social networking sites like Facebook and twitter. I will then discuss what I believe the future of these sites to be.

Statistics according to Mashable show that Facebook "counts more than 250 million active users, 120 million of which they claim login at least once daily." While Twitter statistics count users aged 18 and older who visit or use Twitter at least once per month:

• 2008: 6.0 Million Users (11.1% of adult Internet users.)
• 2009: 18 Million Users (3.8% of adult Internet users.)
• 2010: (Projected) 26 Million Users (15.5 % of adult internet users.)

60% of Twitter users abandon their accounts within their first month of use.
However Twitter's retention rate is only 40% compared to MySpace and Facebook who enjoy a 70% user retention rate.

These statistics are interesting and they show how popular social networking sites are. It also shows that Facebook is more popular than Twitter this may be because it hasn’t been established for so long. However another reason for this could be because Facebook can be more interactive between people due to Facebook chat. It also enables users to have a status with as many characters as possible, because twitter restricts the user to 140.

In the original blog post I felt that social networking sites were having an effect on blogs because more and more people were using them. Although people might not be blogging as much as they once were they are still used by journalists to discuss their opinions on matters such as politics and sport. People will visit the Twitter profiles of friends, family, or their favourite celebrities, and access that information in different ways, whether it’s through clients or portals that attempt to aggregate it. With that in mind, it actually might be best to start thinking of Twitter as the new Blogger.