HubSpot’s “State of the Twittersphere” report documents the sharp global growth in the use of the micro-blogging service Twitter over the last 12 months. It now has an estimated 4-5 million users worldwide, with traffic to its website up 600% over the last year.
Between 5,000 and 10,000 new Twitter accounts are being created each day, though without knowing how many are either becoming defunct or never really started, this number is of limited use.
Twitter users can type in their location in a brief biographical section. As this is free text, the entries are not easily analysable by country. However, “London” is the most popular place name used, followed by “USA”, “San Francisco” and “New York”. “UK” comes in at 17.
Examples of Liberal Democrats on Twitter:
The party’s official Twitter feed
Lynne Featherstone MP
Jo Swinson MP
and Lib Dem Voice



3 Comments
I’ve started a Twitter account but don’t really see the appeal (it was because of its promotion on this site I gave it a go!)
Do you have to keep it running in the background? Do you have to keep pressing “Everyone” or refresh every ten seconds?
I can’t really see how a page full of tinyurl links to illegal downloading sites will help win us marginal constituencies!
I find twhirl handy as it runs in the background and pops up tweets as they occur.
You can also link twitter to your Facebook status so that it updates both at once.
Have a bit of play with it, follow some interesting users – not least those in Mark’s list (above) – and see if it grows on you.
@Liam, you must be following some odd people if all you get is list of tinyurl links to illegal downloads. Never seen one yet.