Nothing beats the tweet

Despite frequent outages resulting from an insupportable traffic rate, weekly market share of Twitter visits was up 500 percent for the week ending July 5, compared with the same time last year, reports HitWise.

It continues to outpace rival microblogging services, most of which cropped up to give users a community with more stable uptime. Twitter's traffic outdid Plurk's and Friendfeed's 12 and 24 times over, respectively; and Pownce, once the most serious contender to the microblogging throne, fared worst of all:

Return traffic also did well, averaging 53 percent over the last four months. Much referral and repeat traffic came from other social networks.

Possible explanations for Twitter's unflinching popularity include the first mover advantage, a larger audience for users (particularly marketers and bloggers), its frequent, perhaps successful use as a cause agent; and the cult popularity of FailWhale, an illustration that appears when the site crashes.

Two weeks ago Twitter received a much-need cash infusion from Jeff Bezos and Spark Capital. Co-founder Biz Stone said most of the financing would be used to support a technology upgrade, but some say the site might purchase Summize, a "conversational" Twitter search tool.