Twitter loosing marketers touch, growth slows

Hubspot, the marketing software, has published its third ‘State of the Twittersphere’ report, the report which they published on March 2009 showed Twitter’s growth peaking at 13%, but this time all is not well for Twitter, as their growth has slowed down to 3%. 3 Months ago Techcrunch reported that visits to Twitter has reduced by 8%, but Twitters CEO Evan Williams told that Twitters visitors had reduced only because most of its users were using 3rd party apps instead of directly using Twitter.

There was another report by Techcrunch which states that 75% of the Tweets made are self promotional and are usually made by marketers, I and a few friends believe that the reason for this slow growth is due to Twitters restrictive policies, many bloggers and marketers have started to feel that Twitter can no longer drive sales or exposure.

I created my Twitter account 8 months ago, I had a bit of success for the first 3 months, but then I started to feel that Twitter can no longer drive traffic to my site, my Twitter follower level went up to 700 but came down to 400 in just a few weeks after these policies were laid. I was really upset for many of Twitters new rules and regulations, this effect won’t be seen by Twitterers with more than a 1000 followers, it is newbies who are going to face this, there are a few unwanted policies I have listed below,

• You cannot follow more than 3 people in under 5 minutes once you reach 1000 following mark (the reason my follower count reduced)
• You cannot post more than 500 tweets a day (People who use automated softwares to schedule tweets are effected by this)
• Not more than 150 direct messages per day.

These were some of the policies announced publicly, but I’m sure there are plenty more unannounced. I actually started to feel that my tweets aren’t read any more, when I had 200 followers I used to get 5 retweets for every 10 tweets I make, now when I have 700 it takes me hours to find one retweet. Before I felt that the tweets I made helped me gain new followers, but now I feel most of them come from my blog and links I have placed to my Twitter account.

The idea of Twitter sounded crazy to me, but i created my account only for the benefits of marketer, not for networking with friends or anything. Now, with marketing with Twitter out of the sight now I don’t know why else should I use Twitter. I’m not really sure about this, please do tell me your views about this.

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