International growth drives Twitter past 50m unique users

NEW YORK - Twitter's popularity continues to soar with the site's worldwide traffic rising to a record 51.6m unique users in July, according to comScore, with the vast majority of new visitors coming from outside the US.

July brought Twitter.com another 7.1m unique users, an increase of 16% over June.

US users grew to 21.2m, up from 20m in June, and now represent 41% of the site's traffic. International users represent 59% of Twitter's traffic, increasing from 55% in June.

The comScore figures only count traffic to Twitter.com and not the traffic to Twitter apps, such as TweetDeck and mobile app Tweetie, which many members use to log into the site.

During July, , which highlights the site's search feature along with the trending topics.

The site also launched a beginner's course for clueless brands and marketers called in July.

But the business was embarrassed by a hacker, who sent the of Twitter and Twitter employees.

ComScore also provided the statistic that 11% of Twitter's users are aged 12 to 17.

Nielsen research earlier this month claimed that .

According to one theory, teens are more interested in Facebook than because their lives tend to revolve around their friends and Facebook is more oriented around friend groups.

Twitter however is better for broadcasting comment, ideas or products to the outside world, to people users have never met.

Evan Williams, Twitter's co-founder and chief executive, said: "Many people use [Twitter] for professional purposes -- keeping connected with industry contacts and following news.

"Because it's a one-to-many network and most of the content is public, it works for this better than a social network that's optimized for friend communication."

Staff recommends

Market Reports

Get unprecedented new-business intelligence with access to ±±¾©Èü³µpk10’s new Market Reports.

Find out more

Enjoying ±±¾©Èü³µpk10’s content?

 Get unlimited access to ±±¾©Èü³µpk10’s premium content for your whole company with a corporate licence.

Upgrade access

Looking for a new job?

Get the latest creative jobs in advertising, media, marketing and digital delivered directly to your inbox each day.

Create an alert now

Partner content