Twitter Reaches 20 Billion Tweets

Twitter has been on a roll lately, smashing record after record. Most had to do with user activity, people are tweeting more than ever and it hit fever pitch during the World Cup. All those thousands of tweets per seconds kept adding up and Twitter has now surpassed another major milestone, 20 billion tweets have been created since its launch four years ago.

The number comes from an unofficial source, GigaTweet, but Twitter is clearly seeing a lot of activity. The 20 billionth tweet was sent yesterday afternoon by a Japanese graphic designer, GGGGGGo_Lets_Go. Twitter users were excited about the milestone, but numbers like these are only going to come faster. Usage has been accelerating for the past year, especially in the past few months. It looks like Twitter may have hit a turning point where everyone who signed up finally realized what the service was all about.

The previous major milestone was hit in March, when it was reported that 10 billion tweets had been posted. It took the service about three and a half years to reach that point, a year after it hit the mainstream and usage started seeing huge growth. It took only five more months to double that number, a clear indication that Twitter is getting huge.

What’s more, Twitter reached 15 billion tweets just two months ago, so a quarter of the total number of tweets ever created was made in July and June, coinciding with the World Cup. At the current rate, GigaTweet estimates, Twitter will reach 30 billion tweets in another four months.

Twitter is said to have close to 200 million unique visitors each month and well over 100 million active users. At this point it is one of the largest social networks in the world. But with Facebook recently adding its 500 millionth user, Twitter has a lot of room to grow yet.