Twitter Passes 10 Million UK Users
With all the buzz around the Facebook IPO over the past few weeks you could be forgiven for forgetting about Twitter. Yet the microblogging site achieved a notable success this week as it racked up it's 10 millionth active user in the United Kingdom.
Twitter, which has 140 million users worldwide, passed 10 million active users in the UK this week, with an impressive 80% of those using the site via their mobile phones.
The data revealed that 8 million of those that logged onto the site in the past 30 days did so via their mobile phone. The global average for mobile tweeting is just 55%.
Studies suggest that the UK ranks 4th in the global league table, behind only America, Brazil and Japan.
It is perhaps not surprising that so many Brits access Twitter through their mobiles however, as the proportion of mobile users in Britain is 45% higher than the global average.
A Twitter UK spokeswoman said: "We have seen growth in the number of people signing up from a mobile."
That, she said, went back to the DNA of Twitter – which was originally set up in 2006 as a service that would work over SMS, which is why its messages are limited to 140 characters.
The active users figure does suggest that a large number of Twitter accounts are dormant however. In January research from Semiocast suggested that 383 million Twitter profiles had been created at that time, so a large proportion of those accounts are not in active use.
Twitter shares one thing in common with Facebook however, and that is the challenge of monetising their traffic. A number of companies have attempted to advertise to users via the platform, with mixed success. Chocolate bar Snickers for instance used sponsored tweets from celebrities, and the campaign received so many complaints from users that the advertising standards agency investigated.
With Facebook also increasingly used via mobile devices rather than computers the enduring challenge for both will be how they can make money whilst maintaining the level of service users have come to love.
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