BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Top Twitter Trends: What Countries Are Most Active? Who's Most Popular?

This article is more than 9 years old.

I thoroughly enjoy Twitter .  I enjoy its compression, its instant gratification, and the fact you can connect with just about anyone anywhere about anything in no time at all.  (Plus, it's helped start revolutions.)  Not that we need a whole lot of new data to prove the global power of social media, but I spent some time recently researching Twitter usage trends.  As always, they're fascinating.

For example, what countries are most active on Twitter?  We'll start with per capita use.  No, it's not the U.S.   In fact, the U.S. is in fifth place, trailing among others, Brunei.  (Who knew?)  But for the highest per capita (aka "tweetiest") country in the world, according to the Northeastern University researchers who compiled the data, that distinction belongs to Kuwait.  Following is the list:

Top 10 Twitter countries, per capita use - Kuwait, Netherlands, Brunei, UK, USA, Chile, Ireland, Canada, Sweden, Puerto Rico

Let's consider some more Twitter facts.  If you slice the data differently, not by per capita use, but by absolute number of Twitter users, according to Sysomos research, the United States heads the list by a wide margin.

Top 10 countries, number of Twitter users: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, France, India, South Africa.   It should be noted that China would be high on this list but doesn't allow Twitter.  There is, however, intense use of Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-Facebook hybrid, which has over 100 million messages posted per day.

So who are the heaviest (individual) hitters in the Twittersphere?  I shouldn't be surprised, but here they are.

Twitter's 10 most popular accounts - Katy Perry (over 50 million followers), Justin Bieber, Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, YouTube, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Instagram, Justin Timberlake.  Not exactly sure what I was expecting here... guess I was hoping for more scientists or novelists or philosophers or business executives or something like that.   Maybe it's just another sign, as that great old Sports Illustrated section is titled, "that the Apocalypse is upon us."  (Personally, I was rather disturbed no Kardashians made this list.)

But not nearly as disturbed as I was to look closely at Twitter age trends.  Here they are (again, Sysomos data).

Twitter age demographics - Each age group is shown as its percentage of overall Twitter users: Ages 15-19 (31%), 20-24 (35%), 25-29 (15%), 30-34 (7%), 35-39 (4%), 40-44 (3%), 45-49 (2%), 50-54 (2%) and 55-60 (1%).

Being 61, I noticed, to my consternation, that I was off the chart.  It ended at age 60.  Oh well.  I guess a few brontosauruses can still enjoy the medium.

*      *     *

Victor is author of  The Type B Manager: Leading Successfully in a Type A World (Prentice Hall Press).