03 July 2009
Ecommerce firms have been advised to look at ways of exploring the monumental growth of micro-blogging site Twitter to drive traffic to their sites in order to boost their businesses.
Figures from Hitwise show that UK internet traffic to Twitter has increased 22-fold over the last 12 months, with 93 per cent of the growth occurring in 2009 alone.
In May 2008 Twitter was the 969th most visited website in the UK but the site has jumped in a year to the 38th most visited website in the UK and the fifth most visited social network.
Despite its popularity, transactional websites such as travel, business and finance sites and online retailers are not benefitting a great deal from it unlike content-driven online media sites such as social networks and entertainment websites.
Commenting, Robin Goad, the director of research at Hitwise, stated that "the key to having a successful Twitter presence is to engage the community".
"Twitter is a great viral marketing channel, and for many users the aim is to have their story 'retweeted'", which involves the story being passed on by other users as many times as possible.
