Hitwise now has the latest UK stats, and visits to Twitter keep on growing.   According to analyst Robin Goad, on Saturday, Twitter accounted for 1 in 184 UK Internet visits online.

The chart above pretty much says it all:   Previously there have been questions about the high level of Twitter churn with various estimates showing that 80%+ of accounts might be dormant.   This however will answer the question I used to hear quite a lot: “yes but my mum in Milton Keynes doesn’t use it.”  (or variations of that)

My answer at the time was usually – she might not use it, but the people who she reads about or watches / listens to do.

Now that answer can be changed again – she might not, but having had Twitter splashed on the front pages of the UK tabloids, she will almost certainly now have some kind of awareness of it.   Indeed, Robin’s post shows that Twitter visitors are becoming more mainstream and are moving closer to the UK population average.

Recently Comscore estimated that Twitter penetration was 12.9% of the UK Internet population.   It will be interesting to see how this changes in light of what has been happening over the past two weeks.

Related articles

• ‘CTB’ and the media trust issue (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
• Super-injunction: Twitter breaks traffic record (mirror.co.uk)
• Twitter: mightier than the sword? (markborkowski.co.uk)
• Super-injunction: Twitter traffic record broken (telegraph.co.uk)
• Twitter’s Super-Duper U.K. Censorship Trouble (techland.time.com)

Having come back after two weeks away, the main social media story in the UK involves Twitter knocking down so called ‘super injunctions.’

These are double gagging orders that the rich and famous employ to stop the media reporting about some scandal.  The double bit refers to the fact that they are not allowed to say that the injunction exists in the first place.

The use of Twitter to get around the UK’s antiquated defamation laws has resulted in the social network breaking its UK traffic record – Time Magazine has a good explanation of the back-story for non UK readers.

The latest twist involves a footballer referred to in court as “CTB” allegedly involved in an affair with a reality TV star.

CTB is taking legal action against Twitter to force the social network to reveal the identities of people behind the accounts who have been talking about the alleged affair.   Symbolic of the inability of the old order to keep up with the new, the footballer in question was according to the Daily Mail being named 16x per minute on Twitter this afternoon (a 5 sec search is enough to tell you who CTB is supposed to be).

The reaction from the parts of the legal establishment has been predictable.  According to the appropriately named lord chief justice, Lord Judge, “modern technology was totally out of control.”

According to Lord Judge, readers place greater trust in the content of traditional media than those who ‘peddle lies’ on websites (via The Guardian).

Actually they don’t.  This is what OFCOM, an official body a bit like the US FCC, has to say on the matter:

1 – 34% of UK consumers trust and 43% don’t trust what they read in newspapers, or a difference of minus nine
2 – 36% of UK consumers trust and 33% don’t trust what they see on social networks, or a difference of plus three (news websites are actually the media commanding the highest trust ratio)

It’s a fundamental point and one which large parts of the establishment hasn’t really grasped yet.   Until they do, expect social networks to continue to blow holes in any attempts by the law to control what can and can’t be read, heard or seen.

(Above – the rise of CTB mentions on Twitter over Fri and Saturday)

Related articles

• “Footballer seeks Twitter answers” and related posts (rocketnews.com)
• Footballer sparks Twitter storm (bbc.co.uk)
• VIDEO: UK court demand causes Twitter trouble (bbc.co.uk)
• Footballer sues Twitter and its users for threatening to reveal his name for having an affair (ubergizmo.com)

Last night Channel4 in the UK started screening the last series of Celebrity Big Brother – the reality TV show where a series of C and Z listers get locked up for a few weeks in the hope that they will start tearing each others hair out within days.   US representatives include a worse for wear looking ex-Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss and Alec Baldwin‘s right-wing brother Stephen.

The chart above from Trendistic again shows how Twitter makes live TV a shared experience, not only with your own Twitter friends, but with hundreds of thousands of people if you choose to subscribe to the general stream of comments around the programme.

At about 9:20pm GMT, the CBB7 hash tag was in one in fifty tweets.    That’s noteworthy as the UK only accounts for around 8% of all tweeple.   The US accounts for 60%+ and it being Sunday afternoon on the US East Coast, there were plenty of US users online.

It’s a good example of how Twitter makes live TV events a shared experience.   Just as it did with ITV’s reality show X-Factor before Xmas and with the US Presidential elections more than a year ago.   Speaking from personal experience, knowing that you can contribute to a running commentary makes it more likely that you’ll tune in when the programme is actually on, rather than recording it on your PVR.

The Trendistic chart also shows the short lifespan of a lot of Twitter trends, by 11pm UK time chatter had subsided to almost zero as people moved on.

I’ve cross-posted this on The Social TV Project, set up by Anna Hardman and Mark Pinsent, it’s dedicated to the whole social media and the return of the viewing schedule theme.