Update: Shortly after 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, February 23, 2012, Twitter hit 500 million users, according to Twopcharts.com. Naturally, the analyst company is on to the next benchmark — the countdown to 600 million registered users. The estimated time until the next Twitter celebration is only 108 days away. There were an estimated 922,000 users accounted for in the past 24 hours.
The countdown for Twitter’s for the 500 million milestone began on Wednesday, February 22, 2012. The new figure comes from Twopcharts.com, a third party Twitter analysis company. New accounts registered per second is constantly above 13 on Wednesday, according to the official countdown board.
Click Image To View Twopcharts Official Countdown Board
There are skeptics who challenge these figures. Twopcharts has noticed fluctuations with the Twitter accounts it has been checking while keeping track of the countdown to 500 million. In a blog post, the company states that out of 100,000 accounts it has looked at, many have been suspended or closed. Others are inactive, still showing the default egg profile picture. It’s disheartening to some that 53% of the sample the company is analyzing is inactive.
The blog post concluded.
“Based on a sample of 100,000 accounts that were registered about three months ago, one has to be very cautious to draw any general conclusions. It is however likely that from the huge amount of new accounts that have been registered in the last year, the statistics will not differ greatly from what we found here.”
Regardless, Twopcharts is encouraging social networking enthusiasts to put on their party hats with a to-the-minute countdown on their website. A graphic also displays how many Twitter users have signed up in the past 24 hours. At 11 a.m. ET, more than 50,000-plus new tweeters were accounted for.
What does Twitter have to say about these numbers? Twitter’s official page lists stats as 100 million-plus active users. At New York’s Guardian Activate Summit In April 2011, Twitter announced its user base in the 200 million-range worldwide. Katie Stanton, vice president of international strategy at Twitter, stated more than 70% of tweets comes from outside the U.S.
Mashable has reached out for Twitter to confirm the report.
Twitter announced on Tuesday that iPhone and Android app users should be expecting some updates that will expediate finding friends, better copy-and-paste options and a “Read Later Service.” Perhaps these improvements will help push user sign-ups.
Let us know in the comments if you will be celebrating with virtual fireworks or do you expect a big Fail Whale in terms of reaching 500 million users.
COMMENTARY: In a blog post dated January 21, 2012, I commented on The Walls blog post that Twitter would reach 500 million users by February 25, 2012. This was based on Twopcharts tracking of Twitter's estimated registered users. According to Twopchart, Twitter reached 400 million users in Autumn 2011, 465 million users in mid-January 2012, and would hit the milestone 500 million users on February 25, 2012. Well, if their tracking is correct, Twitter is not slowing down one bit, because as of today, they have nearly 508 million users.
However, just how many of those 500 million users are actually using Twitter is anybody's guess. A hint could in a sampling of 100,000 accounts by Twopcharts. They claim that 53% were inactive, suspended or never used. That's a very high percentage. If we applied that 53% across the board to all 500 million users, this would mean that only about 250 million are being used. Twitter claims that they had 100 million active users at the end of last year, which is 20% of the total. Facebook claims 485 million active users. That's 57% of Facebook's total registered users (845 million). So what is causing so few Twitter users to engage on Twitter? That's a question that only Twitter CEO Don Costolo can answer, and he's not tallking.
Courtesy of an article dated February 22, 2012 appearing in Mashable
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