Twitter in Asia: Total Users, by Country


By on January 26, 2010
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According to Sycomos latest report on Twitter, Asian countries constitutes about 7.74% of the Twitter unique users worldwide. Indonesia topped with 2.34% of unique users, followed by Japan (1.47) and India (0.97). On a global perspective, more than half of Twitter unique users (56.59%) are located in the US and followed by UK (8.09), Brazil (6.73), Canada (4.36) and Australia (2.63). This is based on analysis of active 13 million unique users, between Oct 16 2009 and Dec 16 2009.

comScore reported the total global unique users of Twitter.com has reached 60 million. However, Fred Wilson argued that “Twitter ecosystem is about 3x Twitter.com.” Twitter ecosystem refers to all interactions with Twitter APIs, via the plethora of third-party Twitter apps i.e. Tweetdeck, bit.ly, Facebook, iPhone apps, etc. Wilson went on to summarize:

You can talk about Twitter.com and then you can talk about the Twitter ecosystem. One is a web site. The other is a fundamental part of the Internet infrastructure. And the latter is 3-5x bigger than the former and that delta is likely to grow even larger.

Let’s assume that Twitter ecosystem is 3-times the size of Twitter.com. With comScore’s 60 million unique visitors worldwide at Twitter.com, the Twitter ecosystem is estimated at 180 million. The total Twitter users across the globe (Twitter.com + Twitter ecosystem) is 240 million!

The table below weaves together Sycomos’ report, comScore’s estimate and Fred Wilson’s Twitter ecosystem. The “% Twitter Users” is derived from Sycomos’ report and the total Twitter users is based on 240 million users worldwide. Indonesia with 5.6 million users, followed by Japan (3.5 million) and India (2.3 million). Malaysia with 6th largest Twitter population in Asia with estimated 1.1 million users (and this is far, far, far more than my previous estimate of Twitter population in Malaysia). And the estimated total Twitter users in Asia is 18.6 million.

Asian Countries, by % of Twitter Users and Total Users

No. Country Rank in Sysomos’ report % of Twitter Users (Sysomos report) Estimated Total Twitter Users
1 Indonesia 6 2.34 5,616,000
2 Japan 8 1.47 3,528,000
3 India 10 0.97 2,328,000
4 Singapore 12 0.88 2,112,000
5 Philippines 13 0.85 2,040,000
6 Malaysia 18 0.47 1,128,000
7 Thailand 25 0.30 720,000
8 China 30 0.23 552,000
8 South Korea 30 0.23 552,000

Mashup of figures from different reports to derive estimates potentially lead to inaccurate conclusions (different reports with different sets of assumptions and methodologies). However, Sysocomos’ “% of Twitter users” gives us some ideas on Twitter use across Asia. With the percentage, at least we can derive Twitter population size by country, using the conservative comScore’s 60 million, plus-ecosystem’s 240 million or any other estimates out there. ¶ @zhiQ

UPDATE April 20 2010: See the latest estimates of Twitter users in Asia here.

UPDATE Feb 20 2010: Based on Google, the estimated, unduplicated number of people who visited Twitter.com over a 1-month period:
1. Japan: 9.9 million users
2. Indonesia: 5.1 million
3. India: 4.2 million
4. South Korea: 1.5 million
5. Philippines: 1.3 million
6. Thailand: 910k
7. Malaysia: 910k
8. China: 680k
9. Singapore: 240k

Image from textually.org.

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