The Wall has reported that Twitter is fast approaching its 500 millionth account. According to a study by third party Twitter app Twopcharts, Twitter will hit the landmark figure by this coming February, predicting it down to the date, on the 25th.

According to Twopchart, there are currently 465 million Twitter accounts, showing a 65% increase since May, when it estimated the figure at 300 million.

Twopchart’s latest figures, and countdown chart, show Twitter growing at a rate of around 11 accounts per second.

Twopcharts Twitter is adding 11 new accounts per second and could pass 500 million in February, says report

There are other facts and figures that are worth keeping in mind when taking a look at Twitter’s growth. Facebook is a few months away from hitting the billion user mark, while China-based Twitter clones, Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo passed a combined 550 million users last November.

As far as Twitter itself is concerned, it is also worth bearing in mind how many of those accounts are actually active, and aren’t spammers, an issue which continues to plague Twitter’s users on regular basis. In September, Twitter announced that the number of active Twitter users per month stood at 100 million, with Twitter.com  receiving more than 400 million monthly unique visitors.

In October, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed that Twitter signups tripled with the launch of iOS 5 integration, so it would seem that Apple has had a significant hand in getting the microblogging network to the 500 million account mark.