Twitter May Have Peaked

The number of Twitter users has flatlined in the last few months after explosive growth—and plenty of hype—in the early part of the year. December's total of 22 million visitors was down 770,000 from Twitter's August peak, according to analytics firm Compete. Some analysts, however—along with Twitter—say visitors numbers aren't telling the whole story. Twitter users, they note, are using the site more than ever.

"Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter's highest-usage day ever. And today will be bigger," Twitter CEO Evan Williams tweeted the day of the Haiti earthquake. An analyst at a traffic-monitoring site is also optimistic about Twitter's prospects: The numbers look bad only in comparison to the site's initial astronomical growth rate, he says, predicting that user numbers will start rising again in the next few months. (More Twitter stories.)