Twitter CEO says 40% of all tweets created on mobile
By Chris Hogg
If you ever needed a bigger sign of where content consumption is heading, look no further than Twitter. The micro-messaging service that saw more than 25 billion Tweets in the last year says its users are increasingly moving to mobile platforms.
In an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed nearly half of all Twitter posts are made from a mobile device.
“Mobile is a more and more and more common use of Twitter–40 percent of all tweets created on mobile devices,” Costolo told Kara Swisher of All Things D. “That might seem low, but it was 25 percent a year ago.”
Costolo also said 50 percent of active users are also active on mobile, indicating more and more people are consuming media on platforms other than a computer.
Costolo credits the increasing mobile usage to the launch of apps launches for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry.
According to a 2010 blog post from Twitter’s co-founder former CEO Evan Williams, Twitter’s mobile website, SMS, Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for BlackBerry are the most-used Twitter apps after the company’s website.
Twitter recently announced a new round of funding with investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as well as existing investors. Swisher revealed the round brought in $200 million with a valuation of $3.7 billion.
In his interview at CES, Costolo said Twitter now has more than 350 employees, 100 of whom were hired in Q4 of 2010.
Mobile usage is on the rise across the board, and companies like Google are betting their future on it. According to Search Engine Land, Google’s AdMob unit is reporting more than two billion ad requests on a daily basis (more than quadrupling over the last 12 months).
Recent data released by comScore also indicates big mobile growth; 234 million Americans aged 13 and older used mobile devices for the three month average period ending in Nov. 2010 and 61.5 million Americans were said to own a smartphone (up 10 percent from the preceding three-month period).
The following is a breakdown of the most popular mobile operating systems:
For more on the future of mobile, check out how media companies are harnessing the mobile space or the 11 key elements for the future of mobile.