GLOBAL – AUGUST 2010 – comScore, Inc, released a report on Twitter.com growth worldwide earlier this month, which found nearly 93 million Internet users visited Twitter.com in June 2010, an increase of 109 percent from the previous year. This excludes usage of Twitter-based applications such as TweetDeck and Internet access outside of home and work (i.e. Internet cafes).
Across the 41 individual countries currently reported by comScore, Indonesia at 20.8 percent had the highest proportion of its home and work Internet audience visiting Twitter.com. Brazil ranked second with 20.5 percent penetration, followed by Venezuela at 19.0 percent, fueled in large part by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s decision to join Twitter in late April. The Netherlands (17.7 percent) and Japan (16.8 percent) rounded out the top five, while countries in Latin America and Asia Pacific represented many of the remaining top markets, including the Philippines (14.8 percent), Mexico (13.4 percent) and Singapore (13.3 percent).
Among the Asia-Pacific countries in the study, South Korea ranks fifth in percentage of reach after Indonesia, Japan, Philippines and Singapore, with 9.3 percent of persons 15 and above accessing Twitter. India (8.0 percent), Malaysia (7.7 percent), New Zealand (7.5 percent), Australia (6.4 percent) and Hong Kong (3.9 percent) rounding out the top ten markets, with Taiwan (1.9 percent) and Vietnam (1.7 percent) trailing behind their neighbors in the region. (Note: reach is relative to the estimated number of Internet users per country.)
“Twitter.com has experienced an explosion in global traffic over the past year, establishing itself as one of the most-visited social networking sites across each of the five worldwide regions,” said Graham Mudd, comScore vice president, search & media. An analysis of the five major global regions revealed that Latin America experienced the strongest audience growth, surging 305 percent to 15.4 million users. Asia Pacific ranked as the second-fastest growing region, climbing 243 percent to 25.1 million visitors. The Middle-East Africa jumped 142 percent to 5 million visitors, while Europe soared 106 percent to 22.5 million visitors. North America, where Twitter has reached a higher maturity level than other regions, saw a growth of 22 percent to nearly 25 million visitors in June.
