Twitter Notes Surge in International Growth

Posted 04/09/2010 at 6:00am | by Paul Lilly

1

Comment

Print

When Twitter was first developed, the microblogging service built up a following mostly concentrated in San Francisco. Boy how times have changed. According to Matt Sanford, lead engineer for Twitter's International team, the social networking site is seeing phenomenal growth around the globe.

Over 60 percent of registered Twitter accounts originate from outside the US, Sanford notes, including some from smaller countries like the Vatican City. Technically, there's an even an account that originated from outer space.

Part of Twitter's International success has come from making the service available in different language. When Twitter was made available in Spanish, for example, Sanford says the site saw a 50 percent boost in signups from Spanish-speaking countries. World events also have played a big role, such as the Chilean earthquake, in which signups shot up 12000 percent, almost all of which were from those who use Spanish as their primary language.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," Sanford said. "Twitter's realtime information network gets more useful as our users grow more diverse and we're continually impressed with the results."

Image Credit: Twitter