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.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
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
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!