Twitter Ranked Fastest Growing Social Platform In The World

Google and Facebook each should have acquired Twitter, but they did not. Now, GlobalWebIndex has the Twitter racehorse solidly in the lead. This is no neck-in-neck race. Twitter raced ahead when heads were turned. An incredible 21% of the global internet population now use Twitter actively on a monthly basis.
Every quarter, GlobalWebIndex produces a new report. This one: GWI.8 is for Q4 2012 and it shows that the number of active Twitter users grew 40% from Q2 2012 to Q4 2012. This is equal to 288 million monthly active users (claimed to have used or contribute to Twitter in the past month) across the 31 markets currently researched by GWI (representing nearly 90% of the global internet population aged 16 to 65). That marks a whopping growth rate in active users of 714% since July 2009.

 

Can you say, I mean tweet, Wow?
Hong Kong led the growth of active usage, but the USA grew a “staggering” 94 percent in second place. It was followed by Russia, China, Italy, and South Korea. You’ll have to visit the blog post to see the next 15 or so on their list. Impressive. Read the full post from Tom at GlobalWebIndex: Twitter Now The Fastest Growing Social Platform In The World.
The GWI analysts have identified three key reasons behind this growth for the U.S.:

• Mobile Devices: The US for many years was a mobile internet laggard, but in 2012 active mobile internet usage expanded from 37% to 43% of US internet users and tablet from 8% to 18%. Also as 31% of US mobile users are now on an iOS device, deep Twitter integration into iOS was a game changer (as reflected in the mobile growth above).

• Older Demographics: : Over-55s are the fastest growing demographic on Twitter! Active usage grew 116% between Q2 and Q4 2012 while active usage among 45-54s increased 81% in the same period. Twitter proved to be the fastest growing social platform in the latter demographic group. In an aging population, this represents tens of millions of well-healed users on Twitter.

This deserves the exclamation point the analysts placed in the first sentence. And you thought the over-55s were only buying iPhone 5s (based on that Samsung television commercial humor).

• Mass Media Integration: TV, films, radio, sports and advertising provided Twitter with an incredible level of exposure, and this is already translating into more users. This integration has provided people with reasons to use Twitter that go well beyond social.

If you want the full report, you can visit the GlobalWebIndex report page where you can purchase the Social Engagement Benchmark 2012 as well as other reports.

Source: www.forbes.com