Despite the added attention being directed toward the microblogging service, though, it looks like its may have started to slow. So what's going on?

Twitter Trends

The new stats come courtesy of Web analytics firm . Its researchers looked at visits to Twitter's Web-based interface from last spring through now and found the site's upward trend appears to have hit a snag. Twitter's market share has been , Hitwise finds, with its search volume showing a significant shift since about April.

Now, it's worth noting that the majority of Twitter users utilize a third-party client to access the service -- only about to of people go through the Twitter Web site, depending on which set of metrics you believe -- but, as Hitwise points out, Web-based traffic and search volume should hold some correlation with the rate of new user adoption.

Other Hitwise data suggests the same effect, showing the number of new users coming to Twitter from its top traffic sources -- sites such as Facebook, Google, and MySpace -- has fallen consistently across the board .