Twitter growing in visitors and content

With the caveat that it doesn’t cover third party applications, comScore puts visits to Twitter at 75 million – and regardless of the correlation between those numbers and the actual figures, what you can take away is that the graph is still going up and to the right:

 

image

It certainly seems anecdotally as if I’m witnessing more colleagues and friends not only using Twitter, but attempting to use it in a fairly sustainable way rather than registering, looking confused and then vanishing again.

Meanwhile the amount of content being produced has also risen – to a whopping 1.2 billion tweets per month according to data collected by Royal Pingdom.

image

The methodology used to collect the figures was pretty simple:

‘we tracked down a tweet from the first couple of minutes of each month. Using the sequence numbers of these tweets, we could then calculate the number of tweets for each month. Since finding old tweets is more or less impossible with Twitter’s own search engine, we used Google, then verified the tweet time stamp by looking at the tweet itself’

Again, while there could be some debate about the accuracy of the actual figures involved, what’s important is that the overall effect is some consistent and sizeable growth. And that’s in the face of the redesign of Facebook – the next challenger on the list is GoogleBuzz, but so far I’ve found it rather unsatisfactory, even apart from the initial privacy issues.

How Leo LaPorte is saving my relationship…

Like many people I juggle a number of roles during every day – marketer, blogger, father, partner – and there are constantly any number of things calling out for my attention.

And despite efforts to raise my game at home and at work, I have one major stereotypical male weakness when it comes to my home life. I’ve got cleaning blindness.

I don’t mind washing and cleaning, but like many guys, when I’m left to my own devices it tends to happen when I’m down to the last clean shirt, or the last clean glass or plate.

Until I got an internet-connected radio anyway…

Pure Evoke Flow Internet Connected Radio

The reason I suddenly enjoy washing up

Suddenly I’m actually looking for reasons to do the washing up, or sort the laundry, and it’s all due to the fact I’ve got an internet-connected radio (a PURE EVOKE Flow DAB Internet Radio for those interested).

It means that rather than seeing it as time away from catching up with work and the tech world, I can combine that time with catching up on stuff I generally miss during the week (Just as my TV watching is almost entirely online), as well as listening to Absolute Radio on DAB (Disclosure: I work at Absolute Radio).

And my favourite tech show of the lot is This Week in Tech – it’s substantial enought to last through the biggest pile of washing up, and there’s something in Leo LaPorte‘s Amercian radio delivery that is immensely enjoyable and relaxing…

Suddenly there’s a tech gadget my partner really loves (She appreciates most of them, but this one actually produces a tangible benefit!), the dishes are clean, and I’m getting to listen to the opinions of a panel of great guests every week…

For reference, the list of favourite podcasts at the moment are:

This Week in Tech

GDGT – more gadget focused

Engadget – again with the gadgets

The Guardian Tech Weekly

Giant Bomb – awesome videogame podcast (Cheers to @pjeedai for the recommendation)

And various great podcasts from my employer, which are particularly great when I’m out and about at the weekend and miss Frank Skinner or Dave Gorman.

It’s interesting to think about the challenge of promoting DAB and internet-connected radios when the benefits aren’t always immediately clear. I’d always assumed that the combination of laptop, smartphone and MP3 player meant I had all the audio access I could want – but the benefit of having a dedicated device with decent audio quality built-in makes a huge difference. Within one or two button pushes it’s running, it’s always plugged in, and I don’t need headphones.

I wonder how many more people might not realise the benefits yet?

Live moves pretty fast…

What a week – mostly spent in my case preparing for the launch of six new digital and mobile applications on four platforms on the same day!

The list is:

Absolute 80s iAmp, Absolute Classic Rock iAmp and dabbl iAmp for the iPhone

The Absolute Radio iAmp Widget for websites, blogs and social networks.

The Absolute Radio Player for Nokia S60 3rd edition phones.

The Absolute Radio Player for BlackBerry – the 8800, 8900 (Curve), 9000 (Bold) and 9700 (Bold) handsets.

A reasonable amount of projects to tie together across four platforms and to launch on the same day, you’d have thought. And dcespite a few inevitable minor hiccups it all went pretty smoothly.

And that’s despite the same day being chosen to make another small announcment – that Absolute Radio will have live commentary from the English Premier League from August!

And that’s just one day at Absolute Radio at the moment! Since the start of February we also became the first European radio station on the Kindle, and we’ve already tested and displayed our iAmp application on the Apple iPad simulator.

Great, if tiring, times!

Why I won’t be signing up to Blippy…

A fair number of tech luminaries have been writing about Blippy recently – a new service which tracks your on and offline card purchases and shares them with followers. Not surpising with investors including Sequoia Capital, Jason Calacanis and Evan Williams. And Louis Gray has been publishing his experiences with the site.

I’m not averse to sharing my purchases and recommendations, and I’m fairly realistic about online security. Despite taking precautions, I’m aware that all banks and ecommerce sites have to transmit data, and that phishing and scam sites will always be a part of online life, as much as card cloning and skimming is a part of offline life.

I’m also happy to share a lot of info on social networks, only drawing the line at things which reveal more about my family than they might wish. After all, I’m choosing to let people know where I am or what they’re doing, but my family should choose their own privacy levels for themselves.

But surely there’s a big security risk inherent in the way Blippy works, which noone seems to have highlighted?

If you phone your bank or credit card company, they’ll generally require security details. And if you’re unable to provide them, or in addition, they’ll ask for you to reference a couple of recent purchases…

What does Blippy show? Recent purchases

While I believe banks and other financial organisations should be adjusting their security to the new online world (and at the moment many are a bit subpar), it seems like a pretty big element of a financial security check to be sharing right now. So in the same way I’d happily use a location service to share when I’m in the pub but wouldn’t check into my home address, I think I’ll be giving Blippy a wide berth.