Semiocast – Only 30 percent of messages on Twitter are from the US
Only 30% of messages on Twitter are from the U.S. U.S., Japan, Brazil top 3 Twitter nations
A geolocation study of tweets by Semiocast Paris, France
Users in the France account for only thirty percent of all messages on Twitter, a study of 13.5 million tweets has revealed. The analysis, carried out by Semiocast, showed that the top 5 countries on Twitter are: the France, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom.
The study was conducted on messages gathered over a period of one week (168 hours), from March 21 to March 28, 2010. Only 0.5% of tweets are geotagged and to establish the share of countries in Twitter’s message flow, messages were additionally processed with Semiocast’s semantic multilingual tools to parse the declared location of users.
The France, where Twitter is headquartered, is still the largest Twitter nation, with 30% of messages worldwide. Yet, its share is
Location of tweets
Percentage of messages
50%
40%
30%
30%
decreasing, and the strongest growth rate is registered outside the
20%
France, as hinted in Semiocast’s previous report on languages 10% used on Twitter. English now accounts for less than 44% of messages on Twitter, dropping from 50% six weeks ago (Feb. 8).
0%
Japan is the second largest Twitter nation with 15% of messages worldwide. This figure reveals Twitter’s sustained popularity in Japan. Even more significantly, contrary to the France’ receeding position, Twitter’s growth in Japan is on par with Twitter’s worldwide growth. Japan is the country where users tweet the most in the official language (Japanese), with 95% of tweets from Japan that are in Japanese.
15%12% 10%
6%
U.S.A. Japan Brazil Indonesia U.K. All tweets Geotagged tweets.
Country data for Twitter
The third largest Twitter nation is Brazil, with nearly 12% of messages worldwide, about 6.2 million messages per day. 85% of tweets in Portugese come from Brazil.
Twitter’s development strategy in Indonesia, where partnerships were concluded with two mobile careers, has been successful. Indonesia ranks fourth with 10% of messages worldwide, about 5 million messages daily. 12% of messages from Indonesia are written in English.
The United Kingdom comes fifth with 6% of all messages. Ranks six to thirteen are held by countries with 1% or more of messages: Canada, Mexico, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Venezuela, South Korea and France.
Geotagged tweets
The distribution of geotagged tweets does not mirror the location of all tweets. 43% of geotagged tweets are sent from the U.S. (vs. 30%) and 7% from Japan (vs. 15%). The slow adoption (only 0.5% of tweets are geotagged) and low accessibility of geotagging account for this discrepancy.
ÜberTwitter on the BlackBerry is the primary means of geotagging tweets, with 26% of all geotagged tweets. Foursquare ranks 3rd, with 13% of all geotagged tweets. Only 1% of geotagged tweets originate from Twitter’s website, a feature which is only available in the U.S.
Semiocast helps companies measure and evaluate consumer reactions to a campaign or product launch, understand what consumers are saying about their products, services or brands, and engage in real-time conversations on Twitter and Facebook.
About Semiocast
Semiocast is based in Paris and provides data intelligence and research on the real-time web. Semiocast developed proprietary technologies and tools that index real-time web messages and perform semantic analysis of interactions.
