Twitter has added more than 100 million registered accounts in 2010, and is now being used by 8% of all American internet users, according to new data.
A post on the company’s blog marked the occasion with an infographic showing some of the more famous joiners this year, including Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama, Conan O’Brien, Diego Forlan, Leonard Nimoy, Cher, Hugo Chavez, Tiger Woods and Kanye West.
The site now has around 200 million users, and is widely recognised as a vital source of breaking news and views, providing real-time, eyewitness accounts of events such as the Iran election protests, the crash-landing of an aircraft on the Hudson River, and the earthquake in Haiti.
However, more detailed stats on Twitter have also been published in a separate report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
According to the Pew research eight per cent of adult internet users in America are on Twitter, with that figure rising to 14 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds.
Almost a quarter of Twitter users check the service several times a day, although 21 per cent said they never checked it at all, suggesting that some people sign up to the service, but don’t use it.
The study also revealed that African-American and Latino adult internet users in the United States were twice as likely as white American adults to use Twitter.
Around 13 per cent of Latino adult web users and 18 per cent of African-American adult web users also use Twitter, compared to just eight per cent of white adults.
Minority groups are bigger users of the microblogging service because they are younger and more connected to mobile technology, said the study.
“Both of those groups, African-American and Latino adult internet users in the US, tend to be younger than white internet users, which helps to lead to their adoption of Twitter,” said Aaron Smith, a senior research specialist with the Pew project.
“Both of those groups are also very mobile populations in their use of cell phones in particular to access the web. Overall, non-whites are more likely than white cell phone owners to do a range of non-voice tasks on their cell phones. They are more likely to use instant messaging and social networking on their phones.”
It claims that 8% of American adult internet users are on Twitter, although that rises to 14% for 18-29 year-olds.
24% of Twitter users check the service several times a day, although 20% check it less often than ‘every few weeks’, and 21% never check it at all – in other words, lapsed users.
