The continuing growth of Twitter

twittertop10

An interesting stat posted on the Twitter blog shows which are the top ten countries with the most people using the Twitter social network as determined from Twitter’s public timeline.

That’s how I describe Twitter, incidentally – a social network, not the original descriptor ‘micro blogging tool.’ My perception of Twitter has evolved.

The US is the leading country, no surprise there, with 40%. The #2 did surprise me – Japan at 39%. Then follows Spain at #3 with 11%, the UK at #4 with 10% and the others as you see in the chart.

It’s good to know this but what does it really mean if you want to know some actual numbers? How many Twitter users are there around the world and how do they break down by country?

Luckily, Twitterfacts has those answers and also an indicator of growth.

tf-twitterusers-actuals

This chart, from January 2008, shows that the total number of Twitter users (squinting at the chart, it looks like around 750,000) has +/- trebled in about eight months.

Twitterfacts pulls its numbers from Twitdir. And today, some six weeks after Twitterfacts produced the graph, Twitdir says the total number of Twitter uses is 907,884.

twitdirnumbers

So that means the top ten countries, in the chart at the top of the page, looks like this from the number of users point of view:

  • USA: 363,153
  • Japan: 354,074
  • Spain: 99,867
  • UK: 90,788
  • Brazil: 63,551
  • Canada: 63,551
  • France: 54,473
  • Germany: 54,473
  • Italy: 45,394
  • Netherlands: 45,394
  • Taiwan: 36,315

Make of the numbers what you will but it looks pretty solid.

And pay attention to Twitterfacts who are tracking growth trends – they reckon it will hit the one million mark in total by April 1 this year.

Could be sooner.

[Later] I didn’t spot Twitterfacts’ more recent prediction of growth until after I posted this post – one million users before March 1.

That’s just over a week away. Possible, highly possible.

Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  1. warzabidul

    Those are some interesting stats. What interests me is the number of British users. That would help explain why and how twitter meetings are so common in the united Kingdom. what’s more surprising is that relatively few of them appear commonly.

    How many people are actively tweeting as opposed to simply registered within countries. London is a great place for twitter meetups and it justifies certain friend’s projects.

    This information is interesting anyway.

  3. Jaap Stronks

    You seem to have some numbers mixed up. The percentages in the international pie chart add up to 100 procent, which is itself 60 percent of the total pie chart (with 40 percent US, 60 percent international).
    For example: 39 percent of international users is Japanese. Compared to the US: 39 percent of 60 percent makes 23,4 percent of total users coming from Japan. 23,4 per cent of 907.884 is 212,444 users. Same goes for other countries, you should multiply all numbers (except the US) by 0,6.

  6. neville

    Thanks for pointing that out, Jaap. You’re right of course. Luckily I didn’t focus the content wholly on the percentages :)

    That’s very neat, Chantelle, tweeting the Oscars. Another example of what anyone can do with this communication tool aka social network.

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    […] Twitter es víctima de su propio éxito. Sus problemas tienen causas que van desde los problemas de escalabilidad al usar Ruby on Rails como plataforma, pasando por la API conflictiva de un proyecto -que algunos dicen que se trata de FriendFeed- hasta el spam y un número cada vez mayor de usuarios. […]

  10. @carlplant

    Thanks for these facts, there have been recent events that has rocketed twitter use, inauguration, Hudson river plane landing and even Steven Fry on BBC tv sharing his love for twitter with fellow twitter user @wossy.

    On the 12th february there is a global charity event called ‘twestival’ which could potentially get some airtime on National tv, again this could see a rise in curiosity!

    So these events combined with the exponential growth should make interesting stats.

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