Mobile apps help Twitter reach 145M users

Twitter also unveils top 10 mobile apps showing Android doesn't make the cut

Twitter CEO Evan Williams announced Thursday that Twitter now has 145 million users, up from 105 million in April.  While Williams did not comment on the company’s profits, he did explain that Twitter has experienced monstrous growth since the company’s adorably-titled “Chirp” conference last April, where it was decided that Twitter needed to revamp its offerings for mobile devices.

The challenge they faced, said Williams in his blog, was that in user tests, iPhone users were finding it difficult to use any of the number of Twitter apps because they were not called “Twitter.”  The company solved this problem by acquiring the iPhone client “Tweetie” from Atebits and renaming it “Twitter for iPhone.”  The company replicated this move with the Blackberry and the Android.

The results, said Williams, have been phenomenal.  The number of total mobile users has grown by 62 percent since April, with 16 percent of all new Twitter users starting out on mobile, compared to the 5 percent when Twitter first became mobile.  Additionally, 46 percent of Twitter users now use Twitter on their mobile phones on a regular basis.  The number of registered Twitter apps has tripled to 300,000 since the Chirp conference.

Besides its registered users, Twitter's traffic appears to be growing nicely as well, with monthly unique visitors up to 180 million. This is nine times more than the 20 million unique monthly visitors the site saw last year when Williams talked about the site slowing down.

Top 10 Twitter apps?

A listing of top 10 Twitter apps reveals that 78 percent of Twitter users use the Twitter Web site, followed by 14 percent who use the mobile Twitter Web site, and another 8 percent who receive Twitter message via text messaging (the numbers add up to more than 100 percent because most users use more than one app).  Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Blackberry account for 8 and 7 percent, respectively. Other users have accessed TwitPic (4 percent), and 3 percent have accessed TweetDeck and Echofon. 

“Users of programs like TweetDeck are some of the most active and frequent users—which is why, along with the nature of how these clients work, a disproportionate amount of the traffic from Twitter runs through such tools,”  wrote Williams in his blog.  “There are a tremendous number of other apps that people are using, not necessarily as their main Twitter client, but as an alternative way to create or view Tweets.”

Something is missing, however. Could it be the fact that Williams’ blog makes no whisper about Twitter for Android?  Indeed, it is.  Apparently, Twitter for Android did not make the list.  For reasons unknown, more people are using UberTwitter and Google Friend Connect (each 2%t).  Williams did, however, mention that a newer version of Twitter for Android was launched this week, but beyond that, no explanation as to why it didn’t make the top 10.

While the company could not be immediately reached for comment, the CEO’s blog mentions that promoted products are doing better than the company originally predicted.

(Image source: 4.bp.blogspot)