Twitter popularity – passing fade or here to stay? eMarketer published a story today titled “Data on Twitter Decline Stacks Up… Tweeting no more?“.

Having spent the last week at Pubcon listening to the deafening drumbeat about Twitter’s growing popularity, I have to say that this title made me wonder if the late night Pubcon parties had negatively impacted my cognitive abilities and caused me to mis-remember all that was presented at Pubcon. But alas the title is misleading, but then again I guess that was the point.

Here’s what the article points out.

1. More and more people are using third party applications to post tweets. The result is that people do not visit Twitter as often as they once did. No duh! There is no reason to visit Twitter.com if you can tweet for a third party app. The decrease in traffic to Twitter in depicted in this table.
   

   Traffic to www.twitter.com is down.

2. This does not mean that Twitter popularity is decreasing. In fact just the opposite is true, Twittter is more popular than ever. With 18 million users in 2009, estimates predict Twitter users will reach 26 million next year.
   

   Twitter popularity continues to rise.

   So there you go. This just proves that it is possible to learn at Pubcon on just a few hours sleep per night.