MICROBLOGGING service Twitter had 100 million new sign-ups this year, the site has revealed, including high-profile celebrity users such as Bill Gates, Tiger Woods and Kanye West.
More than 100 million people joined microblogging service Twitter this year, the company has revealed.
Tiger Woods, Bill Gates, Kanye West and Cher have all signed up to the service in the last 12 months.
The site now has around 200 million users, and is widely recognised as a vital source of breaking news and views, providing real-time, eyewitness accounts of events such as the Iran election protests, the crash-landing of an aircraft on the Hudson River, and the earthquake in Haiti.
According to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, eight per cent of adult internet users in America are on Twitter, with that figure rising to 14 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds.
Almost a quarter of Twitter users check the service several times a day, although 21 per cent said they never checked it at all, suggesting that some people sign up to the service, but don’t use it.
The study also revealed that African-American and Latino adult internet users in the United States were twice as likely as white American adults to use Twitter. Around 13 per cent of Latino adult web users and 18 per cent of African-American adult web users also use Twitter, compared to just eight per cent of white adults.
Minority groups are bigger users of the microblogging service because they are younger and more connected to mobile technology, said the study.
“Both of those groups, African-American and Latino adult internet users in the US, tend to be younger than white internet users, which helps to lead to their adoption of Twitter,” said Aaron Smith, a senior research specialist with the Pew project. “Both of those groups are also very mobile populations in their use of cell phones in particular to access the web. Overall, non-whites are more likely than white cell phone owners to do a range of non-voice tasks on their cell phones. They are more likely to use instant messaging and social networking on their phones."