Twitter crossed 200 Million Accounts, 70% of Traffic International

The number of people who have registered accounts on Twitter has now surpassed 200 million, a representative of the company said publicly yesterday. Katie Stanton, Twitter's Vice President of International Strategy, said at the Guardian Activate conference in New York that there are now more than 200 million Twitter accounts worldwide and more than 70% of all Twitter's traffic comes from outside the US. That means Stanton's job is very important and whatever her International Strategy is, it seems to be working.

Roughly 25% of all tweets come from Japan alone, she said. Twitter said last month that it was adding just under a half million new accounts per day and its business-facing page says there are 175 million registered users. 

Independent research by the blog Business Insider concluded last month that there are 56 million people who are following 8 or more other people on Twitter, a number that site used to estimate the number of active Twitter users. Twitter typically doesn't comment on 3rd party estimates regarding its users or their engagement. The company is focused on a long-term strategy of emphasizing read-only use cases for its service, as a means of increasing its user retention. Facebook's user numbers are several times higher than Twitter's.