A study done using Twitter data from PeopleBrowsr on the same day in May in 2009 and 2010 gives some interesting insight from one of the creators of Twitter (but not a current employee) into how Twitter has grown worldwide over the last year or so.
Done by Dom Sagolla, who has written the book “140 Characters: A Style Guide For The Short Term“, the study benchmarks Twitter data from PeopleBrowsr against population data from Wolfram Alpha with some interesting results.
In terms of “tweets per capita” Singapore had the most on May 16, 2010 (a Sunday, and in 2009 it was a Saturday), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia were tied for least per capita.
Best overall growth in tweets (again comparing just the same day in both 2009 and 2010) went to Uzbekistan and Iran had the worst growth (joining Ethiopia by actually declining in the number of overall tweets). As far as pure tweet volume, the US was unsurprisingly the top country on May 16, 2010 and the tiny British Virgin islands had the lowest volume.
Again, interesting (though certainly not comprehensive over time, nor directly from Twitter) data. Here’s the slide presentation @Dom put together:
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