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Top Twitterers: US, Canada, Norway, Australia, UK, New Zealand

Ross Dawson, June 11, 2009 9:58 PM US PT

[UPDATE:] Here is the updated Twitter nation data from January 2010

Sysomos has just released extensive research on Twitter use, filled with all sorts of fascinating information, such as 72% of Twitter users have joined since the beginning of this year, 53% of Twitterers are women, and marketers are 50 times more likely than normal people to follow over 2000 people.

I am always interested in comparing countries, so I pulled out and analyzed their statistics on where Twitter users are located to calculate the proportion of the population that are use Twitter. I used the Sysomos data on Twitter usage, the ever-handy Nationmaster for population figures, and a combination of the recent http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2009/04/at_current_grow_1.html combined with Sysomos data on recent growth, as well as our own estimates.

The US is in the lead, not surprisingly, though by a far lower margin than even just six month ago. The global growth of Twitter has accelerated recently, making usage in a number of other countries not far behind that of the US. The English speaking countries - Canada, Australia, UK and New Zealand - follow close behind, with Norway the stand-out in non-English speaking countries, together with the Netherlands and Sweden. The figures suggest Twitter is a truly niche interest in other countries, including France and Germany.

One of the other particularly interesting parts of the report was the use of publishing tools. I'm surprised to learn that over 50% of tweets are from the web, with Tweetdeck by far the leading desktop Twitter client. Tweetie and Twitterfon lead in mobile Twitter apps.

For the most current insights and trends in the living networks, follow @rossdawson on Twitter!

6 Comments

Ben Werdmuller said:

I wonder how these correspond to other factors like:

1. Availability of SMS service? (For example, the US has it; the UK has it if you're on Vodafone.)

2. Cost of handsets / data plans?

3. 3G network coverage?

June 12, 2009 9:07 AM

Iggy Pintado said:

Great data Ross - thanks for sharing with the world.
I've already RT'd a few times.

Cheers, Iggy

June 12, 2009 4:45 PM

Sydney Web Design said:

Seeing Australia at number 4 is great news... for us. :P

As for statistics - the fact that 50% comes from web is not that surprising... Twitter's advantage is that you can access it anywhere you have an internet connection. You don't need a dedicated tool.

But TweetDeck's remaining dominance IS surprising. I wonder what this is due to... an early market entry? Tweetdeck seems, at least to me, a power user's tool. And power users are by default a minority. Or am I missing something here? :)

Nik - Big Click Studios
@BigClickStudios

June 14, 2009 5:29 AM

Ross Dawson said:

Ben, good questions - I've been meaning to do some analysis like this for a few years - maybe within the next year? :-)

Nik, interesting questions - perhaps since the most prominent Twitterers mainly use Tweetdeck on the desktop, that's what newbies and others hear about first...

June 14, 2009 9:19 PM

nilesh said:

Nik, the numbers on user share are based on the number of status updates, i.e., 20% of tweets are posted using TweetDeck. This is different from the number of users using TweetDeck.

June 16, 2009 10:43 AM

Rhys said:

I was always suspicious of Twitterers who follow more than a couple hundred people (personally, I only follow 56). When someone adds me who follows that more than a few hundred (yet have less than a hundred following them), I never even look at their profiles. I use Twitter because I'm a believer in "the power of small." People who try to turn Twitter into something big don't get it at all.

June 19, 2009 11:49 AM

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.