Twitter’s own homepage is still the most popular tool for users to update their status on Twitter. Around 46% of all updates are made directly on the site. Social media analytics and monitoring service Sysomosanalyzed 500 million tweets it collected over the past 5 months and found that TweetDeck is the most popular third-party client. TweetDeck has a comfortable lead with a 8.48% share of the market, followed by Tweetie, Twitterific and Seesmic.
Update: There was a mistake in Sysomos’ report. Twitter.com’s share actually grew slightly from 45.7% in June to 46.7%. We apologize for the confusion.
Compared to Sysomos’ last study of Twitter clients in June, Twitter.com’s share fell from 55% to 46%. As Twitter’s growth is slowing down, these numbers make a lot of sense. New users tend to use Twitter’s web interface at first and then migrate to a third-party client. If Twitter.com’s market share among Twitter clients is dropping, then this can be seen as a strong indication that the number of new signups is going down as well.
TweetDeck: The Client of Choice for Active Twitter Users
TweetDeck doesn’t just have the largest number of users, it is also the tool of choice for the most active Twitter users. Sysomos analyzed the number of tweets posted by active users based on their primary Twitter application. On average, TweetDeck users send out 1.24 tweets per day, followed by Seesmic users (1.18 tweets/day) and HootSuite (1.11 tweets/day). Users of all the other popular clients like Tweetie, Twhirl and Twitterific update their status less than once a day. Those who prefer Twitter’s own web interface only send out 0.67 tweets per day.
How Many Clients Do You Use?
Sysomos also analyzed how many third-party clients Twitter users normally use. Looking at active Twitter users only – those with at least 50 tweets in the last 5 months – the study found that 82% only used a single application. 14% used two applications, 2.35% used three and then the numbers drop off quickly. Only 0.01% of all active users used 6 or more clients. Chances are that a lot of active users use different mobile and desktop clients (Tweetie on the iPhone and Seesmic on the desktop, for example). This would explain why quite a large number of users use two clients.
