Social media 'continues to ignite interest'

15:00 3rd June 2010

Digital marketing specialists who have still not begun to use social media as part of their campaigns could be missing out, as sites such as Twitter are continuing to engage audiences.

Tim Gibbon, the editor of Social Media Portal, stated that once a new social media website reaches a mainstream audience, they can grow quickly.

He was speaking after web analytics service Gigatweet found that more than 15 billion Tweets have been posted on micro-blogging website Twitter.

The figures demonstrate the impressive growth of the service, as just one billion Tweets had been sent by November 2008 and five billion by October 2009.

That means that in around nine months, more than ten billion Tweets have been posted.

Digital marketers who do not use Twitter in their campaigns are therefore potentially missing out on a huge audience to sell their products and services.

Mr Gibbon explained that thus far, Twitter has bucked the typical trend of social media websites fading in popularity after an initial spurt of public interest.

He said: "It's the nature of socially driven platforms to evolve and within the current environment to bring collaboration to the forefront."

The example of Bebo's failure to capitalise on its initial popularity is an example of why social media sites need to evolve to progress, he added.