twitter has a long way to go before its micro-blogging service catches up with Facebook, but the social-media darling just crossed another milestone: 100 million active users, and in only five years.
Twitter reports that more than half of those 100 million active users log on every day to follow their interests. In other words, Twitter isn't all about sending 140-character posts. Many sign in just to eavesdrop on what's happening around the world in their areas of interest.
"Twitter's global reach gives a voice to people around the world and as far away as the International Space Station," Twitter said in a blog post. "After launching Hindi, Filipino, Malay and Simplified and Traditional Chinese in the coming weeks, Twitter will support 17 different languages."
Twitter's Shrewd Moves
To its credit, Twitter shrewdly opened its API so that companies of all sizes -- most notably media organizations -- could tweet articles and blog posts and, most recently, follow accounts without having to leave the web page they are on, said Jake Wengroff, global director of social media strategy and research at Frost & Sullivan.
"Twitter also allowed for the creation of thousands of Twitter companion products and applications, including mobile clients, increasing its reach exponentially. This move, however, is being reconsidered: Twitter has made several big moves of late to rein in the ownership of its product, platform, and brand," Wengroff said.
"In May 2011, Twitter purchased TweetDeck, one of the largest social media engagement platforms, for $40 million, and soon after rolled out its own URL-shortening and photo-upload services, ostensibly to wrest usage away from third-party apps."
Twitter VIPs
Choosing to focus more on trends than controversy, Twitter went on in its announcement to break down some of its more notable users. It turns out that 35 global heads of state use Twitter, including 84 percent of U.S. governors and every major presidential candidate. And more than 40 percent of what Twitter has classified as "top global religious leaders" are on Twitter, including @DalaiLama and the Pope, who sent his first Tweet from @news_va_en in June.
Beyond religion, humanitarians are also aboard the Twitter bandwagon -- 99 percent of America's top 200 nonprofits to be exact. Twitter noted the Red Cross's recent response to Hurricane Irene -- @redcross -- signed up lists of official volunteers to assist in four-hour shifts to disseminate the latest information to those affected by the storm.
On the athletic front, every team in the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS tweets. Two-thirds of NBA players are on Twitter.
Entertainers are a given for the micro-blogging service. Eighty-seven percent of Billboard's Top 100 musicians of 2010 are active on Twitter, along with each of the top 50 Nielsen-rated TV shows and plenty of comedians.
Of course, no numerical survey of Twitter would be complete without a look at how reporters are using Twitter. After all, there's been so much talk about how citizen journalists are beating traditional reporters to the punch.
Major newsrooms from @AJEnglish to @WashingtonPost actively use Twitter to supplement their reporting efforts, Twitter noted. And ordinary citizens break news, like the now-famous Space Shuttle image that was retweeted over 2,300 times, and the first photo of the US Airways plane that landed in the Hudson River in 2009.
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