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Twitter Approaching 500 Million Users

Written by - 15 Comments
Categories: Social Media, Social Media Marketing, twitter

Twitter’s tipping point into the spectrum of social media consciousness was in 2007, when it started generating significant attention at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival.Twitter Approaches 500 million users

Since then the 140 character  micro blogging platform has continued to attract both users and investors.

In the 5 years since launching it has attracted significant investment funds with an estimated total capital raising of over $1.3 billion.

The 2 most significant  investments have been:

  • Digital Sky Technology  in August, 2010, which at over $800 million was reported to be the most significant venture round in history
  • Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal on December 2011, invested $300 million

This at the time valued Twitter at  $8.4 billion.

Twitter does not provide details on its users number very often, but in February 2011, Twitter announced it had 200 million registered accounts tweeting 155 million tweets a day.

Twitter’s Second Tipping Point

In June, 2011,  Twitter and Apple announced that Twitter would be embedded in the new Apple mobile operating system and hence have access to Apple’s 200 million registered users.

This it seems has created a second tipping point as more users have been attracted to the platform and in October, Dick Costolo the CEO of Twitter, stated that after the launch of the new Apple mobile iOS5 operating system, Twitter registered sign ups had increased by 300% per day.

Twitter Sign Ups Over One Million a Day

In January this year, independent Twitter account tracker Twopcharts estimated that Twitter would reach 500 million registered users based upon their research.

Currently Twitter is growing at over 1.123 million accounts per day.

This translates to  more than 13 new accounts per second!

Graph Showing  Twitter’s  Hourly Growth Rate

Twitter approaching 500 million users

Now it must be kept in mind that registered doesn’t mean active and Twopcharts estimates that over 50% of all users (using a sample size of 100,000 users) have never sent a tweet!

It must be mentioned that this is an estimate only, but it appears to be well founded and researched.

If you want to view the latest active chart on when Twitter is expected to reach 500 million users then visit Twopchart’s live graph feed showing the countdown to half billion mark.

What will be interesting is to see what Twitter has to say about its numbers in 2012!

More reading

  • Apple Makes Huge Announcement about Twitter
  • Twitter Makes Two Major Announcements
  • Google+ Announces and Launches Pages for Business and Brands
  • How to Get Targeted Twitter Followers
  • The Marketing Secret About Twitter that Most People Don’t Know
  • How To Write A Mind Blowing Headline For Twitter So People Will Read Your Blog
  • 30 Terrific Twitter Facts and Figures

    • Image by Irish Typepad


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    • http://cashwithatrueconscience.com/rbblog Ryan Biddulph

      Hi Jeff,

      Mind blowing numbers, really.

      I continue to see people tweeting in far off locations like Laos and Cambodia, during my current trip. As long as people from these nations – with are less developed – keep taking to the twitter-sphere, it still has room to grow.

      Thanks for sharing with us.

      Ryan

    • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

      Thanks for your comment Mark. Yes, the numbers for social media are mind blowing. I am continually surprised!

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    • http://andynathan.net Andy Nathan

      That is incredible, considering how many small business owners just completely ignore Twitter as a place to do business. Time to take a second look with a market this large.

    • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

      Thanks Edward for your comment. No, Twitter will never be a Facebook but used effectively it can be a great marketing tool if you want to target your audience especially globally. I have found it also very good for networking!

      • Edward

        Jeff, agree that Twitter can be a good (not great) marketing tool and good for networking with real people.  I have connected to real people onTwitter which resulted in real live telephone conversations and actual person-to-person social and business engagement.

        In my opinion and because of the lack of user account data quality and the increased pervasiveness of these persistent spam and hacker accounts, Twitter is good at directing traffic from its site to the higher user quality & more user qualified social platforms such as Facebook and Google+ to ensure a richer customer engagement and better social experience.

        • http://socialmarketingfella.com/ Andre Bourque

          They [Twitter] took a step in the right direction with the dashboard redesign, but I agree, something has to be done to measure the relative value of tweets / Twitterers.  Something like Twitter+Klout and a whole slew of functionality that level of authority brings along with it. 

    • Edawrd

      You and me both and most likely the majority of the real users on Twitter are bombarded by these spammers who promote pronography, Follow-Me-Back or buy Followers, and more recently, pervasive hackers who want to take control of your account by sending out messages/DM’s such as “someone is saying nasty things about you” which the uninformed user ends up following the malicious URL and becomes hacked.

      Twitter lacks the quality control of its user account data and the diligence to effectively enforce its own rules.  As an ‘open’ social platform Twitter will continue to attract these ‘undesireables’ which will continue to reduce the marketing effectiveness as a social network.

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