Twitter Statistics – Updated stats for 2011

Twitter officially launched in 2006 and started its meteoric growth around January 2009, so how’s everything tracking in 2011? Let’s take a look at who’s doing what and how much of it they’re doing in these updated Twitter stats for 2011…

First tweet

On March 14th this year Twitter celebrated it’s 5th birthday. The first tweet was sent on March 21st in 2006 by Jack Dorsey (Twitter’s creator).

Tweets per second

According to Twitter, the record for the number of tweets per second (TPS) is 6,939, set at 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day. This dwarfs the previous record of 456 TPS (on the day Michael Jackson died).

Tweets per day

• In 2007 the average was 5,000 tweets per day.
• In 2008 that had grown to 300,000.
• In 2009 tweets per day averaged 2.5 million.
• In 2010 that number was 35 million tweets per day.

In the month of March 2011 alone, 140 million tweets are being sent on average per day.

Update: As of June 2011, users on Twitter are now averaging 200 million Tweets per day.

Twitter Demographics

Below is a superb infographic from Digital Surgeons based on US Twitter stats from 2010 including gender, age, income and activity on Twitter:

9th Top Site

As of June 2011, Alexa ranks Twitter 9th in the world’s most trafficked sites with Google.com in 1st position, Facebook 2nd and YouTube 3rd.

At a local level, Alexa ranks Twitter as the 12th most popular site in New Zealand with the rest of the top 15 as follows:

1. Google NZ
2. Facebook
3. Google.com
4. TradeMe
5. YouTube
6. Yahoo!
7. NZ Herald
8. Stuff
9. Wikipedia
10. Windows Live
11. Blogger.com
12. Twitter
13. LinkedIn
14. Westpac
15. Amazon

Languages on Twitter

From this awesome Twitter infographic by Digital Buzz (April 2010) we can see the most popular languages used on Twitter are:

1. English – 61%
2. Portugese – 11%
3. Japanese – 6%
4. Spanish – 4%

Most active days on Twitter

Based on April 2010 stats, Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, each accounting for 16% of total tweets.

Women versus Men

This Hubspot report into over 9 million Twitter accounts (excluding celebrities) found that although men and women average the same number of followers, women follow 2% more people than men do and post over 12% more tweets than men.

A Billion Tweets

It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day to go from the first tweet to the billionth tweet. In 2011, 1 billion tweets are now sent every week.

Mobile Users

Twitter use on mobile devices has increased by 182% in the past year (2010/2011).

Stats from Twitter, shared by Twitter at Chirp in 2010 (the official Twitter developer conference); Of Twitter’s active users, 37% use their phone to tweet.

Top Twitter Countries

From that same awesome Twitter infographic by Digital Buzz above (April 2010), we can see the top countries rank as follows:

1. US: 33.3%
2. India: 8.2%
3. Japan: 7.1%
4. Germany: 6.5%
5. UK: 5.9%
6. Brazil: 3.1%
7. Canada: 2.1%
8. Indonesia 2%
9. Australia: 1.8%
10. Spain: 1.7%

Top Twitter Users

Based on number of followers, the top 10 Twitter users are (graph from infographic by Digital Buzz):

Twitter Employees

Twitter started in San Francisco and is still based there. From small beginnings the original Twitter team has grown to reach 400 employees in March 2011:

Number of employees:

• Jan 2008: 8
• Jan 2009: 29
• Jan 2010: 130
• Jan 2011: 350

New accounts

In March 2011, an average of 460,000 new accounts were being created each day.

Most popular trending topics

Here are Twitter’s top Trending Topics for the world from the first half of 2011, divided into two sections:

World events/News

1. AH1N1 – Swine Flu
2. Mubarak – former Egyptian President
3. Easter – Christian holiday
4. Cairo – capital of Egypt
5. #prayforjapan – sentiment following the March earthquake and tsunami
6. Chernobyl – site of nuclear disaster in 1986
7. Libia/Libya – site of an ongoing civil war
8. Fukushima – Japanese nuclear power plant
9. William & Kate – Newly-named Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
10. Gadafi – Libyan political leader

Pop culture

1. Rebecca Black – pop singer
2. Femme Fatale – newly-released Britney Spears album
3. Charlie Sheen – actor
4. #tigerblood – hashtag popularized by Charlie Sheen
5. Nate Dogg – rapper
6. Anderson Silva – Brazilian mixed martial artist
7. Tom & Jerry – famous cartoon
8. Mumford & Sons – British rock band
9. Bieber alert – referring to artist Justin Bieber
10. Queen Gaga – referring to artist Lady Gaga

Tweetable stats you can copy and paste…

Women follow 2% more people on Twitter & post 12% more tweets compared to men http://bit.ly/o90uyT

An average of 460,000 new Twitter accounts are created every day http://bit.ly/o90uyT

3 yrs, 2 mths & 1 day from the 1st tweet to 1 billionth. In 2011, 1 billion tweets now sent every week http://bit.ly/o90uyT

Thanks Charlie Sheen: #tigerblood was the 4th most popular ‘pop culture’ trending topic for the 1st half of 2011 http://bit.ly/o90uyT

37% of active users on Twitter use their phone to tweet http://bit.ly/o90uyT

Twitter users average 200 million tweets per day http://bit.ly/o90uyT

Current Tweet Per Second record is 6,939 set 4 secs after midnight in Japan on New Year’s http://bit.ly/o90uyT

Thursdays and Fridays are the most active days on Twitter (16% of tweet volume each) http://bit.ly/o90uyT

Twitter ranks 9th in the world’s most popular sites http://bit.ly/o90uyT

The 1st tweet was sent March 21st 2006 by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey @Jack http://bit.ly/o90uyT

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Charts, Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.