Bloggers flock to Twitter on social website

TWITTER, the online "microblogging" site, has increased its traffic tenfold in the last year.

The site allows users to post 140-character updates of what they are doing and to follow others' updates.

The site has become popular with celebrities such as Jonathan Ross, John Cleese and Stephen Fry. Barack Obama used it during his US election campaign and firms such as Tesco have used it to advise customers of offers.

Figures from internet monitoring firm Hitwise show visits to the site have increased by 974 per cent over the last year. The fastest growing age group of users is 35-44-year-olds.