Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Tweets Heard 'Round The World

Posted by Amanda Walsh

Living across the pond in Madrid offers some amazing opportunities to learn and experience the Spanish culture and language, but I still want to know what is going on back in the States and around the world. As I've blogged before, Twitter has been a great tool to stay "in the know" with what is happening in many industries including PR, marketing and technology. Now, I have begun to use it as a source for breaking global news. For example, tweets alerted me to the recent earthquake disasters in Haiti and Chile.

Did you know that 60% of Twitter accounts are from users living outside of the United States?! I discovered this intriguing fact in a Mashable.com article posted by Jolie O'Dell. The article highlights recent statistics released by Twitter. O' Dell writes, “international expansion has been on the rise since last year, when Twitter began launching in languages other than English."

Through Twitter's work in translation and expansion throughout various countries, the mini blog has successfully become a tool used in crisis and times of need. For example, lead engineer for Twitter’s international team, Matt Sanford, cited the tragedy of the earthquake in Chile. "Signups spiked 1200% and nearly all of those were using Spanish as their language," he says. Other examples of international growth include a 300% increase of users in Columbia and a 100% user sign-up increase in India. Sanford notes these spikes in memberships could be due to publicity of Twitter use by famous politicians and film stars around the world.

To read more, check out Jolie's article on Mashable.com here.

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