The Twitter Flatline: Why Doesn’t Twitter Grow? [STATS] Ben Parr Twitter’s growth has stalled for yet another month, according to new numbers from Compete and Quantcast. In fact, Twitter.com’s traffic peaked in July 2009 and hasn’t reached that level since. According to web analytics firm Compete, Twitter’s () U.S. traffic grew by 1.45 percent, from 22.48 million in November to 22.81 million unique visitors in December, hardly numbers to brag about. It’s even worse when you consider that these are lower numbers than June 2009. We started to notice this trend all the way back in May, but could never have guessed then it would continue into the new ...

Haiti Earthquake: Twitter Pictures Sweep Across the Web [PHOTOS] January 12, 2010 by Ben Parr An outpouring of well wishes and support for the Haitian people has swept the web in the wake of a devastating 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. And just like during the Eureka earthquake, tweets have quickly spread moving and gut-wrenching TwitPics of the disaster. Photos taken by journalist @CarelPedre on his mobile phone are providing a glimpse into the devastation that has slammed the Caribbean nation. Another Twitter user, @MarvinAdy, shared those pictures through TwitPic (), resulting in tens of thousands of views and countless retweets. There are also thousands of...

Twitter CEO Defends Stats: Today Will Be Our Highest Usage Day Ever Adam Ostrow Has Twitter’s growth really stopped, as we postulated yesterday? Not so fast says Twitter CEO Evan Williams. In a tweet this evening, Williams says, “Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter’s highest-usage day ever (and today will be bigger).” While he doesn’t say what those metrics are, one can assume he’s talking about tweet volume — certainly the greatest measure of how active Twitter ()’s userbase is, as well as crucial to creating value in the site’s search partnerships with Google () and Microsoft. So why then are services like Compete and...

HootSuite Adds Support for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter Lists by Christina Warren One of our favorite tools for the powerhouse Twitter user — HootSuite — just got even better. In a massive update, the free web service has added support for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter Lists. As if that wasn’t cool enough, you can also schedule LinkedIn or Facebook status updates the same way you can schedule tweets. It also looks like a HootSuite () app for the iPhone is on the way. To add in a LinkedIn () or Facebook () account to your profile, just click on Settings and then the “Add Social Network” button. HootSuite uses the OAuth Facebook Connect and Lin...

Follow Friday Trends: How Twitter Lists are Changing #FollowFriday by Vadim Lavrusik When Twitter Lists were first rolled out to everyone, some people questioned how the feature would effect the long tradition of #followfriday, a weekly event on which Twitter users recommend different tweeps they enjoy for various reasons. Though Twitter Lists are changing the way some people participate in #FollowFriday, they have have actually not lowered the number of tweeps participating. #FollowFriday recommendations come in all shapes and sizes. Some people broadly recommend their favorite followers and others are more specific to a subject area or industry. Twitter Lis...

How SMBs Can Capitalize on the Twitter Woes of the Fortune 100 by Jennifer Van Grove This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. Weber Shandwick recently released the results of their study on the Twitter () accounts and behavior of Fortune 100 companies. They found that a majority of Fortune 100 companies are not following best practices, afraid to engage, and overall missing important opportunities that the medium allows. While there are thousands of businesses that get Twitter, it should come as no surprise that those at the to...

5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets by Debbie Weil Debbie Weil is author of THE CORPORATE BLOGGING BOOK and a corporate social media consultant based in Washington, DC. She is @debbieweil on Twitter and blogs at DebbieWeil.com. You’ve heard about “sticky content.” Back in the days of Web 1.0 it was what made folks stick around on your website. The idea was they would stay a while, read every word and then buy whatever you were selling. (This turned out to be a fallacy, but that’s a different post.) Microblogging demands that you create a different kind of content. Let’s call it “slippery.” That means 140-character bursts that are so compelling the...

6 Incredible Twitter Powered Art Projects by Josh Catone Twitter has brought us many things. It lets us communicate in real-time about breaking news events, it lets us share content like photos, music, and videos, and it lets us do business in new ways. But Twitter is also being used to power some very intriguing and beautiful virtual art projects. Tweets are being visualized and mashed up with other content in ways that create stunning online art. In this post we’ll highlight six incredible experimental art projects that are using Twitter () as a basis for their awesome creations. These visualizations go beyond just displaying data in more interesting ways...

10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists by Sarah Evans Sarah Evans is a public relations and new media consultant and speaker at Sevans Strategy. She also authors a PR and social media blog and is the founder of #journchat. Twitter’s new Lists feature is all the rage right now. There are probably already millions of lists, and that number is growing by the minute (or second). So what are people using all these lists for? Are people creating lists just for the sake of creating lists? Savvy individuals are looking for ways to use lists to further their personal/professional agendas, and while we are all still learning how to harness the power of this new feature, h...

How Twitter is Changing the Face of Media by Soren Gordhamer Soren Gordhamer works with individuals and groups on how to effectively use new technologies. He is the author of the book, Wisdom 2.0 and the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference. He is @SorenG on Twitter. The most radical shift to media in recent years is that we now have a central real-time hub that serves to enhance every other content platform on the web. Sure, we could always use RSS for blogs, and sign up to follow a person’s activity on a video or photo sharing site, but used correctly, Twitter () now provides a one-stop, real-time service for all of a person’s content. It allows us som...