Indonesia, Brazil and Venezuela lead global surge in Twitter usage

comScore, Inc, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a report on Twitter.com growth worldwide. The study found that in June, nearly 93 million Internet users visited Twitter.com - an increase of 109% from the previous year - as the social networking site achieved strong gains across all global regions.

Indonesia reported the highest penetration, with 20.8% of Internet users in the country visiting Twitter.com that month, followed by Brazil and Venezuela, with Venezuela's growth fuelled in large part by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's decision to join Twitter in late April.

"Twitter.com has experienced an explosion in global traffic over the past year, establishing itself as one of the most-visited social networking sites across each of the five worldwide regions," said Graham Mudd, comScore vice president, search & media. "Today nearly 3 out of 4 global Internet users access social networking sites each month, making it one of the most ubiquitous activities across the web. As more users around the world have become acquainted with connecting and expressing themselves through social media, it has created an environment where new media like Twitter can emerge globally in a relatively short period of time."

Triple-digit visitation growth witnessed across most global regions

In June 2010, nearly 93 million unique global users age 15 and older visited Twitter.com from a home or work location, an increase of 109% from the previous year. This excludes usage of Twitter-based applications such as TweetDeck. An analysis of the five major global regions revealed that Latin America experienced the strongest audience growth, surging 305% to 15.4 million users. Asia Pacific ranked as the second-fastest growing region, climbing 243% to 25.1 million visitors. The Middle-East Africa jumped 142% to 5 million visitors, while Europe soared 106% to 22.5 million visitors. North America, where Twitter has reached a higher maturity level than other regions, saw a growth of 22% to nearly 25 million visitors in June.

*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Indonesia, Brazil and Venezuela boast highest Twitter penetration in the world

Across the 41 individual countries currently reported by comScore, Indonesia at 20.8% had the highest proportion of its home and work Internet audience visiting Twitter.com. Brazil ranked second with 20.5% penetration, followed by Venezuela at 19.0%. With Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez joining Twitter in late April, Twitter.com penetration in the country spiked 4.8 percentage points in a few short months. The Netherlands (17.7%) and Japan (16.8%) rounded out the top five, while countries in Latin America and Asia Pacific represented many of the remaining top markets, including the Philippines (14.8%), Mexico (13.4%) and Singapore (13.3%).

*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Smartphones drive mobile Twitter adoption in US and Europe

An analysis of Twitter usage via mobile for the six mobile markets currently reported by comScore (US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy) revealed that Twitter is gaining adoption among smartphone users. In the US, 8.3% of smartphone users (4.2 million people) accessed Twitter.com in a month via the browser on their mobile devices, outpacing each of the European markets. In Europe, 2.8% of smartphone users overall accessed Twitter.com (1.7 million users), with the UK experiencing the strongest penetration in the region at 5.8%, followed by Germany with 3.1% and France with 2.1%.

*Includes only mobile browser access to Twitter and does not include other Twitter-based mobile applications.

"For applications such as Twitter that function as an instantaneous broadcast medium, the mobile device represents the ideal platform to engage with this content anytime and anyplace," added Mudd.

"The advanced web browsing features of smartphones enable this behaviour, making it likely to accelerate as these devices gain continued adoption. While desktop-based Internet usage is still king, mobile web usage is surging on a global scale placing applications like Twitter at the forefront of that paradigm shift."