Against common knowledge, one of the most common ways people use Twitter is as a social information filter and link distributor. In many cases, Twitter is also replacing people’s RSS readers (which is also my experience).

The case of TechCrunch is very interesting: One of the ways TC uses Twitter is to Tweet out links to their stories, which then spread virally as followers retweet those links. TC is a big believer in retweets (in fact, there is now a retweet button at the bottom of every post)

Over the past few months, TC has experienced the power of Twitter firsthand as the percentage of traffic has grown to the point that it is now their second largest source of outside traffic after Google. In the past 30 days, Twitter accounted for 9.7 percent of all traffic to Techcrunch.com, up from 1.8 percent six months ago. This is out of millions of visits.

Summary: TechCrunch is not typical of most Websites, but this data certainly shows the potential of Twitter to generate traffic.