According to official numbers provided by Nielsen, traffic to Twitter.com was down a dramatic 27.8% between September and October 2009, falling to 18.9 million unique visitors. While the drop of 27.8% to the actual website does not take into account the growing number of Twitter followers who use phone based apps like Twitterific and therefore bypass going to the site, the steep decline has raised eyebrows with marketers across all industries, especially music.
While traditional consumer packaged goods companies have failed to find the right way to use Twitter, most accounts are inactive or just stay active during promotional periods, hip-hop artists and their fans have flocked to the 140 words or less as a means for artists to stay connected to their fans and fans to feel like they are part of the artists’ lives. Want to be a major hip-hop artist? Well then you gotta get yourself a Twitter account…much like you had to have yourself a MySpace a couple years back. But all is not well in Twitter land for the hip-hop nation.
