3rd State of the Twitosphere in Belgium

The combination of living in Belgium and being interested in Twitter inspired me in the past to analyze the twitosphere in Belgium. The first analysis of the twitosphere on country level - for Belgium - was published on this blog on April 17 last year (this post). Several months later - on August 16 last year - I published an update.

This is my third attempt to analyze the community of Twitter users in Belgium. I particulary interested in the evolution of Twitter usage. Was the hype over or is the Twitter community still increasing ? The first question in such an analysis is the number of Twitter users in Belgium. Twitter locates 1491 Twitter users in Belgium, Twitdir reports 1252 Twitter users, Terraminds (when it was still available) reported 920.

Based on the location-info in the Twitter profiles, I was able to find 2118 Twitter users in Belgium, still active users. Persons who have closed their Twitter accounts are not included in this number. Because the number of Twitter users not mentioning a true location in their Twitter profile is estimated at around 50%, the actual number of Twitter users in Belgium will probably exceed 2118. With a population of 10.5 million people (source : Wikipedia), the Twitter user density for Belgium is one Twitter account for every 5000 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in Belgium
The graph below shows the history of the Belgian Twitter accounts. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Belgian Twitter accounts. Twitter users who haven't published any messages and Twitter users with a private profile (their messages are only visible for their approved followers) are not included in this graph.



Oldest Twitter accounts from Belgium

1. http://twitter.com/marcio - marcio - first message on 26/07/2006
2. http://twitter.com/zingo - Martin - first message on 22/08/2006
3. http://twitter.com/BuzzWorkers - Ben Borges - first message on 21/09/2006
4. http://twitter.com/onepointzero - Colin O'Brien - first message on 22/09/2006
5. http://twitter.com/lode - Lode - first message on 26/09/2006
6. http://twitter.com/jacobeus - Nicolas Jacobeus - first message on 28/09/2006
7. http://twitter.com/roald - Roald - first message on 28/09/2006
8. http://twitter.com/vpieters - Veerle Pieters - first message on 17/11/2006
9. http://twitter.com/malchick - Malchick - first message on 18/11/2006
10. http://twitter.com/nijst - Stijn F. - first message on 18/11/2006

Private or public
243 Twitter acounts from Belgium or 12% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 294 Twitter accounts from Belgium or 14% do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Belgium follows 25 Twitter accounts.



Top 10 following

1. http://twitter.com/robinwauters - Robin Wauters - 1.184 following
2. http://twitter.com/sidelinemag - Side-Line Magazine - 823 following
3. http://twitter.com/fotograaf - www.bart.la - 743 following
4. http://twitter.com/thesisters - Anna & Betty - 484 following
5. http://twitter.com/quinze - Denis Balencourt - 438 following
6. http://twitter.com/asimov - Bruno Durdu - 408 following
7. http://twitter.com/bartvanbelle - Bart Van Belle - 379 following
8. http://twitter.com/bwards - bwards LIVE! - 350 following
9. http://twitter.com/nilsgeylen - Nils Geylen - 351 following
10. http://twitter.com/scharre - Johan Schaerlaeckens - 315 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 136 Twitter users from Belgium or 6% have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. The messages published by these Twitter users are only read by themselves (and by search engines). An average Twitter user from Belgium has 31 followers.



Top 10 followers

1. http://twitter.com/vpieters - Veerle Pieters - 2.616 followers
2. http://twitter.com/robinwauters - Robin Wauters - 1.193 followers
3. http://twitter.com/netlash - Bart - 775 followers
4. http://twitter.com/aguerra - Andrea Guerra - 528 followers
5. http://twitter.com/crossthebreeze - Kris Hoet - 494 followers
6. http://twitter.com/tijs - Tijs - 462 followers
7. http://twitter.com/bnox - Clo Willaerts - 435 followers
8. http://twitter.com/Pietel - Pietel - 433 followers
9. http://twitter.com/mschenk - Maarten Schenk - 379 followers
10. http://twitter.com/emich - Michael Uyttersprot - 373 followers

Updates
An update is the term refering to Twitter messages published by a Twitter users. These are also called tweets. The average number of updates for a Twitter users from Belgium is 373. 108 Twitter users (or 5%) are still waiting for their first message to be published. Below you can find two top 10 lists, one with Twitter users where messages are published in an automated way, the second one with "real" Twitter users.



Top 10 updates from non human Twitter accounts

1. http://twitter.com/dsonline - De Standaard Online - 87.331 updates
2. http://twitter.com/ClopMonitor - ClopMonitor - 48.300 updates
3. http://twitter.com/rtlinfo - RTL Info - 41.563 updates
4. http://twitter.com/radioo - radioo - 37.773 updates
5. http://twitter.com/lesoir - Le Soir - 18.295 updates
6. http://twitter.com/tijd - De Tijd - 12.311 updates
7. http://twitter.com/lecho - L'Echo - 11.527 updates
8. http://twitter.com/belgium_nl - belgium_nl - 10.686 updates
9. http://twitter.com/radioo_donna - radioo_donna - 10.657 updates
10. http://twitter.com/vrtnieuwsnet - De Redactie - 8.157 updates

Top 10 updates from "real" Twitter users

1. http://twitter.com/emich - Michael Uyttersprot - 7.747 updates
2. http://twitter.com/atog - Koen Van der Auwera - 7.614 updates
3. http://twitter.com/Kmeron - FrF_Kmeron - 6.159 updates
4. http://twitter.com/netlash - Bart - 6.058 updates
5. http://twitter.com/Inferis - Inferis - 6.036 updates
6. http://twitter.com/nilsgeylen - Nils Geylen - 4.637 updates
7. http://twitter.com/studio_stefke - Stefan Van De Velde - 4.567 updates
8. http://twitter.com/robinwauters - Robin Wauters - 4.536 updates
9. http://twitter.com/Mateusz - Mateusz - 4.313 updates
10. http://twitter.com/imkedielen - Imke Dielen - 3.724 updates

Tweet frequency
The tweet frequency is het average number of Twitter messages published on a unit of time, calculcated from the first message published. Twitter accounts created in the last 30 days were not taken into account.



Top 10 tweet frequency non human Twitter accounts

1. http://twitter.com/radioo - radioo - 275,18 tweets/day
2. http://twitter.com/radioo_donna - radioo_donna - 270,26 tweets/day
3. http://twitter.com/belgium_nl - belgium_nl - 222,40 tweets/day
4. http://twitter.com/dsonline - De Standaard Online - 212,68 tweets/day
5. http://twitter.com/ClopMonitor - ClopMonitor - 175,64 tweets/day
6. http://twitter.com/fmbrussel - FM Brussel Live! - 152,83 tweets/day
7. http://twitter.com/rtlinfo - RTL Info - 119,70 tweets/day
8. http://twitter.com/radioo_radio1 - radioo_radio1 - 111,43 tweets/day
9. http://twitter.com/belgium_fr - belgium_fr - 101,25 tweets/day
10. http://twitter.com/lesoir - Le Soir - 56,45 tweets/day

Top 10 tweet frequency real Twitter users

1. http://twitter.com/Kmeron - FrF_Kmeron - 22,08 tweets/day
2. http://twitter.com/Tjakkahhh - Tjakkahhh - 21,12 tweets/day
3. http://twitter.com/emich - MichaÃ"l Uyttersprot - 17,66 tweets/day
4. http://twitter.com/atog - Koen Van der Auwera - 17,47 tweets/day
5. http://twitter.com/rrradiogirrrl - Sigrid - 15,92 tweets/day
6. http://twitter.com/vaantje - Thomas - 15,89 tweets/day
7. http://twitter.com/WimProot - WimProot - 13,79 tweets/day
8. http://twitter.com/netlash - Bart - 13,25 tweets/day
9. http://twitter.com/vrxj81 - Johan Vrolix - 12,00 tweets/day
10. http://twitter.com/studio_stefke - Stefan Van De Velde - 11,64 tweets/day

Degree of activity
36% of all Twitter users from Belgium have publised at least one message in the last 7 days.
31% of all Twitter users from Belgium have not published a message for more than a month.
17% of all Twitter users from Belgium have published at least message on in the period between 7 and 31 days (older than a week, but in the last month).

12% of all Twitter users from Belgium is private, so no information on their degree activity is available.
On 5% of the Belgian Twitter accounts not a single message has been published.

Conclusion
The graphs show that there is a group of heavy Twitter users in Belgium. There users produce many tweets, they follow lots of other users, they are being followed by lots of other users. On the other hand there is a large portion of Twitter accounts that can be considered as probable inactif : not a single message or a very small number of messages, no or only a few followers, no or only a few following, a lot of time since the last tweet. Between these two extremes there is large group of the remaining Twitter users.

I was a little bit surprized to notice that the growth of the Twitter user in Belgium has not stopped yet, it even looks that the growth rate is even increasing. This surprized me because of the group of A-list bloggers in Belgium (who were the first to find their way to Twitter) already started using Twitter a long time ago. Twitter is attracting new users who probably do not have a blog. The growth of Twitter amongst Belgians clearly shows that the Twitter platform fulfills a need.

First state of the Twitosphere in Australia

Twitter is used in almost every country on this globe, including in the countries down under. This time I will share some figures concerning the twitosphere in Australia.

Using the same approach as for the previous countries, I managed to find 3641 active Twitter accounts from Australia. A Twitter account was considered to be held by someone from Australia if the location explicitely refers to Australia or if the Twitter user was located in Australia according to one of the Twitter mapping mashups. The actual number of Australian Twitter users is probably higher as only 50% of the Twitter users specify their location in their profile (see this previous post).

For a population of 21.2 million people (according to Wikipedia), Australia has 3641 Twitter accounts, meaning that there is a Australian Twitter account for every 5,823 inhabitants.

History of the Australian Twitter accounts
The graph below shows the history of the Australian Twitter accounts. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Australian Twitter accounts.


Oldest Twitter accounts from Australia
http://twitter.com/dataphage - dataphage - first message on 20/07/2006
http://twitter.com/sailor - Wilson - first message on 10/08/2006
http://twitter.com/sinisterfrog - sinisterfrog - first message on 26/08/2006
http://twitter.com/celia141 - Celia - first message on 27/08/2006
http://twitter.com/jngo - John - first message on 9/09/2006

Public of Private
336 Twitter acounts from Australia or 9.2% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 17% of the Australian Twitter accounts do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Australia follows 24 Twitter accounts.


Top 5
http://twitter.com/dan7 - Daniel - 3.460 following
http://twitter.com/grum - Chris Barraud - 2.110 following
http://twitter.com/JINXIE - Jacinta Gascoigne - 1.853 following
http://twitter.com/petendonna - Peter & Donna - 1.180 following
http://twitter.com/problogger - Darren Rowse - 906 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 8% of the accounts have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. An average Twitter account from Australia has 26 followers.


Top 5
http://twitter.com/Ed_Dale - Ed Dale - 1.992 followers
http://twitter.com/dan7 - Daniel - 1.634 followers
http://twitter.com/Kitta - Kitta - 1.606 followers
http://twitter.com/problogger - Darren Rowse - 1.474 followers
http://twitter.com/duncanriley - Duncan Riley - 1.063 followers

Updates
Only 3% of the accounts from Australia are still waiting for their first update to be published. Currently an average Twitter account from Australia has 213 updates.


Top 5
http://twitter.com/aflbot - aflbot - 11.645 updates
http://twitter.com/Tuna - Gary Barber - 11.634 updates
http://twitter.com/andrewbarnett - andrew barnett - 11.560 updates
http://twitter.com/baggygreen - baggygreen - 10.510 updates
http://twitter.com/jjprojects - John Johnston - 10.057 updates

Tweet frequency
The tweet frequency is the average number of Twitter messages - also called Tweets - a Twitter users produces on a single day. I did only consider the Twitter users who have posted messages over a periode longer than 30 days.


Top 5
http://twitter.com/baggygreen - baggygreen - 152,32 tweets/day
http://twitter.com/cmail_breaking - CourierMail Breaking - 74,31 tweets/day
http://twitter.com/aflbot - aflbot - 36,97 tweets/day
http://twitter.com/1000Monkeys - 1000Monkeys - 35,38 tweets/day
http://twitter.com/jjprojects - John Johnston - 31,63 tweets/day

Degree of activity
48% of all Twitter accounts from Australia with a public feed did not post an update in the last 30 days. They can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts.

34% of all Twitter accounts from Australia with a public feed did post at least one message in the last 7 days, indicating that these accounts are still alive.

Conclusion
This state of the Australian Twitosphere is only a snapshot, meaning that the figures mentioned in this post have already changed because the Twitosphere is a very dynamic environment with several new accounts being created every day, new connections being made between accounts (following/followers) and of course new messages being written every hour of the day.

Users from Australia were among the first to start using Twitter (from July 2006). From November 2006 the number of users increased at an higher rate. From April 2007 the growth in the Australian twitosphere accelerated further. The growth remained at the same speed from April 2007 until now.

The penetration of the number of Twitter users in Australia is very high compared to other countries previously analyzed, only Iceland - with a very small Twitter community - has an higher penetration.

First state of the Twitosphere in Iceland

Last week check legend Bobby Fischer died in his new home country Iceland. At the same time I was wondering why Iceland had so many Twitter users. For an estimated population of 312,872 (Wikipedia article) I was able to find 84 Twitter accounts, resulting in a Twitter account for every 3,725 inhabitants.

Let's have a closer look at the twitosphere in Iceland.

History of the Twitter accounts in Iceland
This graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts in Iceland. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts in Iceland.


Oldest Twitter accounts from Iceland
http://twitter.com/briansuda - Brian Suda - first message on 22/11/2006
http://twitter.com/gusti - Gusti - first message on 29/12/2006
http://twitter.com/rosastef - Rosastef - first message on 8/01/2007
http://twitter.com/Kiddi - Kristinn Agnarsson - first message on 27/01/2007
http://twitter.com/kjarri - Kjartan Albertsson - first message on 28/01/2007

Public of Private
13 Twitter acounts from Iceland or 15.5% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 23% of the Twitter accounts in Iceland do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Iceland follows 21 Twitter users.


Top 5
http://twitter.com/bjork - bjork - 992 following
http://twitter.com/Kalli - Kalli - 102 following
http://twitter.com/briansuda - Brian Suda - 92 following
http://twitter.com/oskuskaktus - Ósk Gunnlaugsdóttir - 71 following
http://twitter.com/salvor - Salvör - 60 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 24% of the accounts have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. An average Twitter account from Iceland has 15 followers.



Top 5
http://twitter.com/briansuda - Brian Suda - 371 followers
http://twitter.com/bjork - bjork - 243 followers
http://twitter.com/Kalli - Kalli - 112 followers
http://twitter.com/oskuskaktus - Ósk Gunnlaugsdóttir - 57 followers
http://twitter.com/salvor - Salvör - 45 followers

Updates
4% of the accounts from Iceland are still waiting for their first update to be published. Currently an average Twitter account from Iceland has 135 updates.


Top 5
http://twitter.com/Kalli - Kalli - 4,058 updates
http://twitter.com/Fk1710 - Frida Kjartansdottir - 1,551 updates
http://twitter.com/briansuda - Brian Suda - 927 updates
http://twitter.com/hthth - Hrafn Th. Th. - 575 updates
http://twitter.com/imoxxx - imo - 497 updates

Tweet frequency
The tweet frequency is the average number of Twitter messages - also called Tweets - a Twitter users produces on a single day. In the list below I have only taken the Twitter users into account who have posted at one message in the last 30 days.

Top 5
http://twitter.com/Kalli - Kalli - 13,18 tweets/day
http://twitter.com/imoxxx - imo - 8,15 tweets/day
http://twitter.com/hthth - Hrafn Th. Th. - 4,83 tweets/day
http://twitter.com/briansuda - Brian Suda - 2,19 tweets/day
http://twitter.com/oskuskaktus - Ósk Gunnlaugsdóttir - 1,76 tweets/day

Degree of activity
58% of all Twitter accounts from Iceland with a public feed did not post an update in the last 30 days. They can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts.

30% of all Twitter accounts from Iceland with a public feed did post at least one message in the last 7 days, indicating that these accounts are still alive.

Conclusion
This state of the Twitosphere in Iceland is only a snapshot, meaning that the figures mentioned in this post have already changed because the Twitosphere is a very dynamic environment with several new accounts being created every day, new connections being made between accounts (following/followers) and of course new messages being written every hour of the day.

Iceland is an country complete surrounded by water. At the same time Iceland is the most developed country (Wikipedia article). Users from Iceland were rather late to discover Twitter (from November 2006). From February 2007 the twitosphere in Iceland grew in a linear way. This results in a very high penetration - compared to other (larger) countries.

The usage patterns shown above are similar to the usage patterns for other countries for which I analyzed the twitosphere (see the sidebar for a list of these countries). The Twitter users from Iceland are strongly linked to Twitter users in other countries such as the USA, the UK and Canada. The most followed Twitter account from Iceland is http://twitter.com/GunnarHafdal, someone from Denmark.

It will remain a question where the Twitter community in Iceland with currently around 30 active Twitter users is large enough to survive.

First State of the Twitosphere in India

I published already several blogposts on this blog analyzing the Twitosphere is several European and South American countries (see the sidebar). Last week I had a close look at the twitosphere in Canada. The next country analyzed - the first country in Asia - is India.

Using the same approach as for the previous countries, I managed to find 1631 active Twitter accounts in India. A Twitter account was considered to be held by someone from India if the location explicitely refers to India or if the Twitter user was located in India according to one of the Twitter mapping mashups. The actual number of Twitter users in India is probably higher as only 50% of the Twitter users specify their location in their profile (see this previous post).

For an estimated population of 1.12 billion people (according to Wikipedia), India has 1631 Twitter accounts, meaning that there is a Twitter account in India for every 687,000 inhabitants. Currently for Iceland and the Netherlands there is one Twitter account for less then 10,000 inhabitants. For Canada there is a Twitter account for every 10,014 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in India
This graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts in India. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts in India.


Oldest Twitter accounts from India
http://twitter.com/pajama - Pajama Pockets - first message on 28/07/2006
http://twitter.com/harshadsharma - Harshad Sharma - first message on 2/08/2006
http://twitter.com/Kalyan - Kalyan Sagar - first message on 14/08/2006
http://twitter.com/hardik - Hardik Shah - first message on 27/08/2006
http://twitter.com/Dolly - Dolly - first message on 31/08/2006

Public of Private
257 Twitter acounts from India or 15.8% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends. In the analyzed European countries this percentage varied from 3.5% (Italy) to 22% (Belgium). In Canada 7.1% of the Twitter accounts were private accounts.

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 36% of the Twitter accounts in India do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from India follows 10 Twitter users. An average Canadian Twitter account follows 23 Twitters accounts. In the analyzed European countries this average varied from 9.6 (Belgium) to 32 (Italy).


Top 5
http://twitter.com/vijay - Vijay - 1,435 following
http://twitter.com/Gauravonomics - Gaurav Mishra - 972 following
http://twitter.com/GharExpert - GharExpert - 799 following
http://twitter.com/regalfinance - regalfinance - 635 following
http://twitter.com/RaviKarandeekar - Ravi Karandeekar - 521 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 25% of the accounts have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. An average Twitter account from India has 8 followers. This average is far below the average for Canada (25 followers).


Top 5
http://twitter.com/Gauravonomics - Gaurav Mishra - 276 followers
http://twitter.com/drmani - Dr Mani - 247 followers
http://twitter.com/labnol - Amit Agarwal - 213 followers
http://twitter.com/kiruba - Kiruba Shankar - 208 followers
http://twitter.com/abdulqabiz - Abdul Qabiz - 176 followers

Updates
10% of the accounts from India are still waiting for their first update to be published. Currently an average Twitter account from India has 88 updates. This is again significantly lower than the average for the Canadian twitosphere. The top 2 Twitter accounts are non human, meaning that the messages are automatically generated. In other countries I discovered more automated Twitter accounts.


Top 5
http://twitter.com/indianews - India News - 39,831 updates
http://twitter.com/PHP_programmer - onlinejobsforall.com - 10,053 updates
http://twitter.com/bluepotion - Manasa Malipeddi - 2,224 updates
http://twitter.com/aalaap - Aalaap Ghag - 1,827 updates
http://twitter.com/prsn - Prasoon - 1,756 updates

Degree of activity
60% of all Twitter accounts from India with a public feed did not post an update in the last 30 days. They can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts. In Canada the percentage of inactive Twitter accounts was 46%.

27% of all Twitter accounts from India with a public feed did post at least one message in the last 7 days, indicating that these accounts are still alive. In Canada the percentage of active Twitter accounts was 38%.

Conclusion
This state of the Twitosphere in India is only a snapshot, meaning that the figures mentioned in this post have already changed because the Twitosphere is a very dynamic environment with several new accounts being created every day, new connections being made between accounts (following/followers) and of course new messages being written every hour of the day.

Users from India were among the first to start using Twitter (from July 2006). From March 2007 the growth in the twitosphere in India accelerated. The growth of new Twitter user accounts in India remained at the same speed from March 2007 until now.

The degree of activity in the twitosphere in India is lower than in the other analyzed countries. The percentage of active Twitter users, the number of Twitters users followed and being followed, the number of updates (Twitter messages published), the number of non human Twitter accounts are all significantly lower compared to Canada and several European countries.

For a country with a huge population (estimated at 1.12 billion), the number of Twitter users is surprisingly low. Especially because India is known for its IT workforce. There are a lot of IT specialists from India working in the USA and in Europe. I have the impression that the IT workforce within India does not use Twitter to communicate intensively with their colleagues working abroad.

First state of the Twitosphere in Canada

I published already several blogposts on this blog analyzing the Twitosphere is several European and South American countries (see the sidebar). The next country analyzed is Canada.

Using the same approach as for the previous countries, I managed to find 3307 active Twitter accounts from Canada. A Twitter account was considered to be held by someone from Canada if the location explicitely refers to Canada or if the Twitter user was located in Canada according to one of the Twitter mapping mashups. The actual number of Canadian Twitter users is probably higher as only 50% of the Twitter users specify their location in their profile (see this previous post).

For a population of 33.126 million people (according to Wikipedia), Canada has 3307 Twitter accounts, meaning that there is a Canadian Twitter account for every 10,014 inhabitants. Currently for Iceland and the Netherlands there is one Twitter account for less then 10,000 inhabitants.

History of the Canadian Twitter accounts
This graph below shows the history of the Canadian Twitter accounts. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Canadian Twitter accounts.


Oldest Twitter accounts from Canada
http://twitter.com/Dick - Dick - first message on 13/07/2006
http://twitter.com/astroboy - astro - first message on 14/07/2006
http://twitter.com/velkr0 - velkr0 - first message on 16/07/2006
http://twitter.com/sonson - sonson - first message on 17/07/2006
http://twitter.com/SteveDinn - Steve Dinn - first message on 17/07/2006

Public of Private
Only 234 Twitter acounts from Canada or 7.1% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends. In the analyzed European countries this percentage varied from 3.5% (Italy) to 22% (Belgium).

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 16% of the Canadian Twitter accounts do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Canada follows 23 Twitter accounts. In the analyzed European countries this average varied from 9.6 (Belgium) to 32 (Italy).



Top 5
http://twitter.com/Tolchock - Maki - 2.473 following
http://twitter.com/ambermacarthur - amber mac - 1.560 following
http://twitter.com/lisamac - Lisa McMillan - 937 following
http://twitter.com/trishussey - Tris Hussey - 920 following
http://twitter.com/MatthewDaniels - Matthew Daniels - 795 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 7% of the accounts have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. An average Twitter account from Canada has 25 followers. This average is in line with the averages observed for the European countries : between 10.5 (Belgium) to 26 (Italy).



Top 5
http://twitter.com/ambermacarthur - amber mac - 3.639 followers
http://twitter.com/snookca - Snook - 1.171 followers
http://twitter.com/lisamac - Lisa McMillan - 840 followers
http://twitter.com/mezzoblue - Dave Shea - 826 followers
http://twitter.com/willpate - Will Pate - 815 followers

Updates
Only 3% of the accounts from Canada are still waiting for their first update to be published. Currently an average Twitter account from Canada has 188 updates, which is higher than the averages observed for the European countries from 72 (Belgium) to 106 (Italy and Spain). The analysis for the European countries was done several months ago. The averages have probably increased by now.

The relatively high average number of updates can be explained by several very active Twitter accounts. Some of them are from a human twitterer, others however are from an automated source. 50% of the Twitter users in Canada had less then 34 updates.



Top 5 human twitterers
http://twitter.com/definetheline - Michael Mistretta - 9.366 updates
http://twitter.com/Chris24 - Chris Thomson - 9.254 updates
http://twitter.com/bunneh - bunneh - 4.704 updates
http://twitter.com/darylcognito - daryl n cognito - 4.556 updates
http://twitter.com/ChadOhman - Chad Ohman - 4.467 updates

Top 5 non human twitterers
http://twitter.com/mylesb - Myles Braithwaite - 54.632 updates
http://twitter.com/WTL_iTunes - WTL's iTunes - 19.529 updates
http://twitter.com/globeandmail - globeandmail - 5.367 updates
http://twitter.com/Vancouver_News - Vancouver News - 5.050 updates
http://twitter.com/hfx_ben - ben tremblay - 3.344 updates

Degree of activity
46% of all Twitter accounts from Canada with a public feed did not post an update in the last 30 days. They can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts.

38% of all Twitter accounts from Canada with a public feed did post at least one message in the last 7 days, indicating that these accounts are still alive.

Conclusion
This state of the Canadian Twitosphere is only a snapshot, meaning that the figures mentioned in this post have already changed because the Twitosphere is a very dynamic environment with several new accounts being created every day, new connections being made between accounts (following/followers) and of course new messages being written every hour of the day.

Users from Canada were among the first to start using Twitter (from July 2006). From November 2006 the number of users increased at an higher rate. From April 2007 the growth in the Canadian twitosphere accelerated further. The growth of new Twitter user accounts in Canada slowed a little bit down afterwards. Surprisingly the growth remained at the same speed from June 2007 until now.

First state of the Twitosphere in Chile

Last week I published an analysis of the Twitosphere in Argentina. In August I published an analysis of the Twitosphere in Brazil. On this analysis (for Brazil) a commenter mentioned an Argentinian initiative called Tuitiar.com but he also indicated that Chile has the highest Internet penetration of Latin America. I wanted to verify wether Chile has also a very active Twitter community.

Using the same approach as for all previous analyzed countries, I was able to find 593 active Twitter accounts from Chile. A Twitter account was considered to be held by someone from Chile if the location explicitely refers to Chile or if the Twitter user was located in Chile according to one of the Twitter mapping mashups. The actual number of Chilean Twitter users is probably higher as only 50% of the Twitter users specify their location in their profile (see this previous post).

For a population of 16.6 million people (according to Wikipedia), Chile has 593 Twitter accounts, which means that there is a Chilean Twitter account for every 28,000 inhabitants. Currently for Iceland and the Netherlands there is one Twitter account for roughly 10,000 inhabitants. The two other South American countries had a significant lower penetration of Twitter (Argentina : 1 for every 45,000 inhabitants, Brazil : 1 for every 451,000 inhabitants).


History of the Chilean Twitter accounts
This graph below shows the history of the Chilean Twitter accounts. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Chilean Twitter accounts.



Oldest Twitter accounts from Chile
http://twitter.com/OjoPiojo - Rodrigo Guaiquil - first message on 12/10/2006
http://twitter.com/paulbeelen - Paul Beelen - first message on 22/10/2006
http://twitter.com/ochovio - ochovio - first message on 17/11/2006
http://twitter.com/juque - Juan Pablo Aqueveque - first message on 17/11/2006
http://twitter.com/wachunei - wachunei - first message on 18/11/2006

The first Twitter user I was able to identify only showed up mid October 2006, several months later compared to other countries. The popularity of Twitter started to grow from March/April 2007. The graph reveals that this growth is still continuing, with even an acceleration from August 2007.


Public of Private
77 Twitter acounts from Chile or 13% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends. In the analyzed European countries this percentage varied from 3.5% (Italy) to 22% (Belgium). For Argentina this percentage was only 3.2%.


Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 26% of the Chilean Twitter accounts do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Chile follows 14.4 Twitter accounts. In the analyzed European countries this average varied from 9.6 (Belgium) to 32 (Italy). For Argentina the average was much higher : 46.8. Chilean Twitter accounts are on average followed by less other Twitter users compared to Argentinian Twitter accounts.



Top 5
http://twitter.com/crhistian - crhistian - 174 following
http://twitter.com/fmeza - Fernando Meza - 162 following
http://twitter.com/DonPepe - Don Pepe - 157 following
http://twitter.com/dubo - César Dubó - 153 following
http://twitter.com/eduardoe - Eduardo Escarez - 146 following


Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 9% of the accounts have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. An average Twitter account from Chile has 16.5 followers. This average is in line with the averages observed for the European countries : between 10.5 (Belgium) to 26 (Italy). The average for Chile is however again lower than the average for Argentina : 46.



Top 5
http://twitter.com/mariapastora - M. Pastora Sandoval - 210 followers
http://twitter.com/dubo - César Dubó - 196 followers
http://twitter.com/OjoPiojo - Rodrigo Guaiquil - 173 followers
http://twitter.com/crhistian - crhistian - 162 followers
http://twitter.com/Paloma - Paloma Baytelman - 153 followers


Updates
5% of the accounts from Chile are still waiting for their first update to be published. Currently an average Twitter account from Chile has 215 updates, which is again higher than the averages observed for the European countries from 72 (Belgium) to 106 (Italy and Spain). This time the average for Chile is comparable to the average for Argentina (225). Please keep in mind that these averages are only snapshots, as lots of new Twitter messages (or Tweets) are published every day.



Top 5
http://twitter.com/sepulveda - Diego Sepulveda - 4.939 updates
http://twitter.com/latercera - La Tercera - 4.917 updates
http://twitter.com/Cooperativa - Radio Cooperativa - 4.313 updates
http://twitter.com/Sauce - Sauce - 3.879 updates
http://twitter.com/rots - Rodrigo Vera - 3.832 updates


Degree of activity
37% of all Twitter accounts from Chile with a public feed did not post an update in the last 20 days. They can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts.

48% of all Twitter accounts from Chile with a public feed did post at least one message in the last 7 days, indicating that these accounts are still alive. This percentage (48%) is comparable to the percentages for Argentina (45%) and Brazil (52%). It is significantly higher than the percentages of active users observed for the European countries. The South American Twitospheres seem more active than the European Twitospheres.


Conclusion
This state of the Chilean Twitosphere is only a snapshot, meaning that the figures mentioned in this post have already changed because the Twitosphere is a very dynamic environment with several new accounts being created every day, new connections being made between accounts (following/followers) and of course new messages being written every hour of the day.

Users from Chile were rather late to start using Twitter, the first Twitter user only appeared mid October 2006. The popularity of Twitter in Chile started to rize from March/April 2007, about at the same time as for the analyzed European countries. Where the growth in Europe slowed down, the creation of new Twitter accounts in Chile continued steadily.

The Twitter community in Chile is in absolute numbers not as big as the Twitter community in Argentina, but the number of Twitter users divided by the size of the population indicate that there are relatively more Twitter users in Chile (more than twice as much). It is very well possible that this is caused by the fact that Chile has the highest Internet penetration of Latin America.

The main difference of the Twitter communities in Argentina and Chile is that the Twitter community in Argentina is much more interlinked. On average each Twitter account is following more Twitter users.

First state of the Twitosphere in Argentina

I already published several blogposts on this blog with an analysis of the Twitosphere in several countries (see the sidebar). On the previous analysis (for Brazil) a commenter mentioned an Argentinian initiative called Tuitiar.com (a blog and a Twitter account). So it won't be a surprise that the next country analyzed is Argentina.

Using the same approach as for the previous countries, I managed to find 896 active Twitter accounts from Argentina. A Twitter account was considered to be held by someone from Argentina if the location explicitely refers to Argentina or if the Twitter user was located in Argentina according to one of the Twitter mapping mashups. The actual number of Argentinian Twitter users is probably higher as only 50% of the Twitter users specify their location in their profile (see this previous post).

For a population of 40,3 million people (according to Wikipedia), Argentina has 896 Twitter accounts, which means that there is a Argentinian Twitter account for every 45,000 inhabitants. Currently for Iceland and the Netherlands there is one Twitter account for roughly 10,000 inhabitants.


History of the Argentinian Twitter accounts
This graph below shows the history of the Argentinian Twitter accounts. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Argentinian Twitter accounts.



Oldest Twitter accounts from Argentina
http://twitter.com/Leech - Leandro Ardissone - first message on 28/09/2006
http://twitter.com/2Curious - 2Curious - first message on 29/10/2006
http://twitter.com/pugvichka - pugvichka - first message on 4/11/2006
http://twitter.com/dfgonzalez - Diego - first message on 21/11/2006
http://twitter.com/slaff - slaff - first message on 1/12/2006


Public of Private
Only 37 Twitter acounts from Argentina or 3.2% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends. In the analyzed European countries this percentage varied from 3.5% (Italy) to 22% (Belgium).

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 20% of the Argentinian Twitter accounts do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Argentina follows 46.8 Twitter accounts. In the analyzed European countries this average varied from 9.6 (Belgium) to 32 (Italy). There are several Twitter accounts from Argentina with a relatively high number of following, see the top 5 below.



Top 5
http://twitter.com/Pachoro - Pachoro - 1111 following
http://twitter.com/espina - niñoespina - 1010 following
http://twitter.com/simonapalermo - simonapalermo - 800 following
http://twitter.com/elpeor - elpeor - 715 following
http://twitter.com/flowmi - flowmi - 684 following


Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 8% of the accounts have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. An average Twitter account from Argentina has 46.3 followers. This average is higher than the averages observed for the European countries : between 10.5 (Belgium) to 26 (Italy). There are several Twitter accounts from Argentina with a relatively high number of followers, see the top 5 below.



Top 5
http://twitter.com/tuitiar - Tuitiar.com - 628 followers
http://twitter.com/Conz - Conz - 516 followers
http://twitter.com/espina - niñoespina - 495 followers
http://twitter.com/dariogallo - d.g. - 472 followers
http://twitter.com/mancini - Pablo Mancini - 410 followers


Updates
Only 3% of the accounts from Argentina are still waiting for their first update to be published. Currently an average Twitter account from Argentina has 225 updates, which is again higher than the averages observed for the European countries from 72 (Belgium) to 106 (Italy and Spain). Please keep in mind that these averages are only snapshots, as lots of new Twitter messages (or Tweets) are published every day.



Top 5
http://twitter.com/lanacioncom - La Nacion - 6418 updates
http://twitter.com/pabloaltclas - paltclas - 5210 updates
http://twitter.com/mtorchiari - Marina Torchiari - 5162 updates
http://twitter.com/espina - niñoespina - 5113 updates
http://twitter.com/clarincom - clarincom - 4087 updates


Degree of activity
40% of all Twitter accounts from Argentina with a public feed did not post an update in the last 20 days. They can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts.

45% of all Twitter accounts from Argentina with a public feed did post at least one message in the last 7 days, indicating that these accounts are still alive. This percentage (45%) is significantly higher than the percentages of active users observed for the European countries. This percentage is comparable to the percentage observed for the twitosphere in Brazil (52%0.


Conclusion
This state of the Argentinian Twitosphere is only a snapshot, meaning that the figures mentioned in this post have already changed because the Twitosphere is a very dynamic environment with several new accounts being created every day, new connections being made between accounts (following/followers) and of course new messages being written every hour of the day.

Users from Argentina were not among the first to start using Twitter, the first Twitter user only appeared at the end of September 2006, followed by the next one exactly one month later. There was an increase in the number of Twitter users in Argentina from March/April 2007, about at the same time as for the analyzed European countries. Where the growth in Europe slowed down, the creation of new Twitter accounts in Argentina accelerated from the beginning of August 2007.

The current Twitter community in Argentina is increasing day by day, the percentage of active Twitter accounts is higher than in the analyzed European countries. The future for Twitter in Argentina looks bright.

Second state of the DutchTwitosphere

On April 22, 2007 I published the first state of the Twitosphere in the Netherlands. With this new state of the Twitosphere I want to give an idea how the Twitosphere in the Netherlands has evolved from then.

Using the same approach as for the first state of the Twitosphere, I managed to find 2090 active Twitter accounts from the Netherlands. A Twitter account was considered to be held by someone from the Netherlands if the location explicitely refers to the Netherlands or if the Twitter user was located in the Netherlands according to one of the Twitter mapping mashups. The actual number of Twitter users in the Netherlands is probably higher as only 50% of the Twitter users specify their location in their profile (see this previous post).

For a population of 16.57 million people (according to Wikipedia), the Netherlands has 2090 Twitter accounts, which means that there is a Twitter account for every 7,928 inhabitants.

History of the Twitter accounts in the Netherlands
This graph below shows the history of the Twitter accounts in the Netherlands. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Twitter accounts. For private Twitter accounts (177) the date of the first message is not accessible. In addition to that, there are still 88 Twitter accounts without a single update, they are still waiting for the first message to be published. The growth of the number of Twitter accounts in the Netherlands accelerated from mid March 2007. This accelerated growth seems to continue until now. On an average day 8 new Twitter accounts are created by someone from the Netherlands.



Degree of activity
The graph below is generated only for the Twitter accounts where I could determine the date of the first message and the date of the last message, meaning that Twitter users without messages and private Twitter accounts were left out.

The graph contains two parts. In the upper part, Twitter users who have published at one Twitter message in the last 14 days are plotted as a line, starting from the date of the first message to the date of the last message. The color of the line depends on the number of messages (also called updates) published. The lower part contains Twitters users without updates in the last 14 dates. These accounts can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts.

The lines in the lower part of the graph are much shorter and show almost no colors.


Types of Twitters users in the Netherlands
A while ago I published a blogpost describing 4 types of Twitter users : Lurkers, Bots, High Influentials and Twitter stars.

On the graph below all 2090 Twitter users in the Netherlands are plotted according to their number of updates and the number of followers. There are currently no High Influential Twitter users (high number of followers but low number of updates). There are several Bots - Twitter accounts where the messages are automatically generated (low number of followers and very high number of updates). Luckily there are several Twitter Stars in the Netherlands, e.g. twitter.com/Dutchcowboy, twitter.com/erwblo, twitter.com/frankmeeuwsen, twitter.com/gervis, twitter.com/marketingfacts en twitter.com/tonie.



Top lists
To conclude this state of the Twitosphere, several top lists of Twitter accounts according to different criteria.

Oldest Twitter accounts from the Netherlands
http://twitter.com/cvodb - Caroline - first message on 14/07/2006
http://twitter.com/ianus - !ianus keller - first message on 15/07/2006
http://twitter.com/martijn - Martijn - first message on 15/07/2006
http://twitter.com/SLAM - Stéphan - first message on 21/07/2006
http://twitter.com/stronk - stronk - first message on 24/07/2006

Top 5 Following
http://twitter.com/fortune_cookie - fortune_cookie - 1128 following
http://twitter.com/twitterNL - NL - 1150 following
http://twitter.com/KennySB - Christian Weij - 996 following
http://twitter.com/todaysart - TodaysArt Festival! - 933 following
http://twitter.com/3VOOR12 - 3VOOR12 - 564 following

Top 5 Followers
http://twitter.com/3VOOR12 - 3VOOR12 - 551 followers
http://twitter.com/twitterNL - NL - 482 followers
http://twitter.com/marketingfacts - Marco Derksen - 450 followers
http://twitter.com/erwblo - erwin blom - 433 followers
http://twitter.com/FrRoderick - Roderick Vonhogen - 381 followers

Top 5 Updates - manually generated Twitter messages
http://twitter.com/erwblo - erwin blom - 7355 updates
http://twitter.com/marketingfacts - Marco Derksen - 6823 updates
http://twitter.com/gerben - Gerben Bouwhuis - 6060 updates
http://twitter.com/vangeest - Yuri van Geest - 5206 updates
http://twitter.com/Slijterijmeisje - Petra - 4719 updates

Top 5 Updates - automatically generated twitter messages
http://twitter.com/ShopAHolic - Shopaholic - 84089 updates
http://twitter.com/detelegraaf - De Telegraaf - 7046 updates
http://twitter.com/spitsnet - Sp!ts - 5851 updates
http://twitter.com/volkskrant - De Volkskrant - 5578 updates
http://twitter.com/MegaJobs - MegaJobs.nl - 3402 updates

Second state of the Belgian Twitosphere

On April 17, 2007 I published the first state of the Twitosphere in Belgium, my home country. With this new state of the Twitosphere I want to give an idea how the Belgium Twitosphere has evolved since then.

Using the same approach as for the first state of the Twitosphere, I managed to find 854 active Twitter accounts from Belgium. A Twitter account was considered to be held by someone from Belgium if the location explicitely refers to Belgium or if the Twitter user was located in Belgium according to one of the Twitter mapping mashups. The actual number of Belgian Twitter users is probably higher as only 50% of the Twitter users specify their location in their profile (see this previous post).

For a population of 10.5 million people (according to Wikipedia), Belgium has 854 Twitter accounts, which means that there is a Twitter account for every 12,295 inhabitants.

History of the Belgian Twitter accounts
This graph below shows the history of the Belgian Twitter accounts. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Belgian Twitter accounts. For the 107 private Twitter accounts the date of the first message is not accessible. In addition to that, there are still 25 Belgian Twitter accounts without a single update, they are still waiting for the first message to be published. This leads to a graph based on 693 Twitter accounts. The growth of the number of Twitter accounts in Belgium accelerated from mid March 2007. This accelerated growth seems to continue until now.


Degree of activity
The graph below is generated only for the Twitter accounts where I could determine the date of the first message and the date of the last message, meaning that Twitter users without messages and private Twitter accounts were left out.

The graph contains two parts. In the upper part, Twitter users who have published at least one Twitter message in the last 14 days are plotted as a line, starting from the date of the first message to the date of the last message. The color of the line depends on the number of messages published (also called updates). The lower part contains Twitters users without updates in the last 14 dates. These accounts can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts.

The lines in the lower part of the graph are much shorter and show almost no colors, confirming the hypothesis that these Twitter accounts are inactive.


Types of Twitters users in Belgium
A while ago I published a blogpost describing 4 types of Twitter users : Lurkers, Bots, High Influentials and Twitter Stars.

On the graph below all 854 Belgian Twitter users are plotted according to their number of updates and the number of followers. There are currently no High Influential Twitter users (high number of followers but low number of updates). There are several Bots - Twitter accounts where the messages are automatically generated (low number of followers and very high number of updates). Luckily there are several Twitter Stars in Belgium, e.g. twitter.com/aguerra, twitter.com/emichbe, twitter.com/erlend, twitter.com/mvuijlst, twitter.com/netlash, twitter.com/pascalvanhecke, twitter.com/Pietel, twitter.com/robinwauters and twitter.com/vpieters.


Top lists
To conclude this state of the Twitosphere, I present here top lists of Twitter accounts according to different criteria.

Oldest Twitter accounts from Belgium
http://twitter.com/zingo - Martin - first message on 22/08/2006
http://twitter.com/BuzzWorkers - Ben Borges - first message on 21/09/2006
http://twitter.com/onepointzero - Colin O'Brien - first message on 22/09/2006
http://twitter.com/lode - Lode - first message on 26/09/2006
http://twitter.com/cruchon - Nicolas Jacobeus - first message on 28/09/2006

Top 5 Following
http://twitter.com/thesisters - Anna & Betty - 503 following
http://twitter.com/robinwauters - Robin Wauters - 192 following
http://twitter.com/bartvanbelle - Bart Van Belle - 155 following
http://twitter.com/GDB - Geert De Busschere - 128 following
http://twitter.com/vpieters - Veerle Pieters - 124 following

Top 5 Followers
http://twitter.com/vpieters - Veerle Pieters - 845 followers
http://twitter.com/aguerra - Andrea Guerra - 244 followers
http://twitter.com/netlash - Bart - 179 followers
http://twitter.com/robinwauters - Robin Wauters - 151 followers
http://twitter.com/peterelst - Peter Elst - 143 followers

Top 5 Updates - manualy generated Twitter messages
http://twitter.com/netlash - Bart - 1869 updates
http://twitter.com/emichbe - Michaël Uyttersprot - 1677 updates
http://twitter.com/atog - Koen Van der Auwera - 1585 updates
http://twitter.com/postback - vincent m - 1559 updates
http://twitter.com/aguerra - Andrea Guerra - 1493 updates

Top 5 Updates - automatically generated Twitter messages
http://twitter.com/dsonline - De Standaard Online - 21513 updates
http://twitter.com/ClopMonitor - ClopMonitor - 15937 updates
http://twitter.com/rtlinfo - RTL Info - 7076 updates
http://twitter.com/EUXTV - E U X . T V - 2129 updates
http://twitter.com/lesoir - Le Soir - 2076 updates

First state of the Twitosphere in Brazil

I published already several blogposts on this blog with an analysis of the Twitosphere is several European countries (see the sidebar). The next country analyzed is not in Europe this time, but in South America : Brazil.

Using the same approach as for the previous countries, I managed to find 421 active Twitter accounts from Brazil. A Twitter account was considered to be held by someone from Brazil if the location explicitely refers to Brazil or if the Twitter user was located in Brazil according to one of the Twitter mapping mashups. The actual number of Brazilian Twitter users is probably higher as only 50% of the Twitter users specify their location in their profile (see this previous post).

For a population of 190 million people (according to Wikipedia), Brazil has 421 Twitter accounts, which means that there is a Brazilian Twitter account for every 451,000 inhabitants. Currently for Iceland and the Netherlands there is one Twitter account for roughly 10,000 inhabitants.

History of the Brazilian Twitter accounts
This graph below shows the history of the Brazilian Twitter accounts. The graph is based on the date of the first message posted on each of the public Brazilian Twitter accounts.


Oldest Twitter accounts from Brazil
http://twitter.com/crisdias - CrisDias - first message on 13/07/2006
http://twitter.com/vitorl - Vitor Leite - first message on 20/07/2006
http://twitter.com/guercheLE - Luciano E. Guerche - first message on 21/07/2006
http://twitter.com/eduardonasi - Eduardo Nasi - first message on 26/07/2006
http://twitter.com/flaviadurante - Flavia Durante - first message on 26/07/2006

Public of Private
Only 36 Twitter acounts from Brazil or 8.6% have chosen to keep their updates only available to their friends. In the analyzed European countries this percentage varied from 3.5% (Italy) to 22% (Belgium).

Number of following
A Twitter user can choose to follow one or more other Twitter accounts, called "following". 10% of the Brazilian Twitter accounts do not follow other Twitter users. An average Twitter account from Brazil follows 12,0 Twitter accounts. In the analyzed European countries this average varied from 9,6 (Belgium) to 32 (Italy).


Top 5
http://twitter.com/kleverson - Kleverson Neves - 206 following
http://twitter.com/ChrisD - Chris D - 146 following
http://twitter.com/Luzdeluma - Luma - 146 following
http://twitter.com/antoun - Henrique Antoun - 126 following
http://twitter.com/tdoria - Tiago Doria - 116 following

Number of followers
A follower is someone who has indicated another Twitter account as following and receives all updates of that other Twitter account. 6% of the accounts have no Twitter followers at all, meaning that no one else on Twitter has indicated this account as following. An average Twitter account from Brazil has 12.0 followers. This average is in line with the averages observed for the European countries : between 10.5 (Belgium) to 26 (Italy).


Top 5
http://twitter.com/ChrisD - Chris D - 146 followers
http://twitter.com/tdoria - Tiago Doria - 116 followers
http://twitter.com/amanda_mpbr - Amanda Maykot - 73 followers
http://twitter.com/bdieu - Bee Kerouac - 73 followers
http://twitter.com/fseixas - Fabio Seixas - 52 followers

Updates
Only 3% of the accounts from Brazil are still waiting for their first update to be published. Currently an average Twitter account from Brazil has 57 updates, which is lower than the averages observed for the European countries from 72 (Belgium) to 106 (Italy and Spain). The lower average for Brazil can be explained by the fact that there is only one Twitter account with automatically generated Twitter messages. This kind of Twitter messages are often generated by news services. Please keep in mind that these averages are only snapshots, as lots of new Twitter messages (or Tweets) are published every day.


Top 5
http://twitter.com/jornaldedebates - Jornal de Debates - 1955 updates
http://twitter.com/antoun - Henrique Antoun - 691 updates
http://twitter.com/fernandolins - Fernando Lins - 658 updates
http://twitter.com/jplages - Joao Paulo - 516 updates
http://twitter.com/julielondongirl - ~*Julie*~ - 492 updates

Degree of activity
35% of all Twitter accounts from Brazil with a public feed did not post an update in the last 20 days. They can perhaps be considered as inactive accounts.

52% of all Twitter accounts from Brazil with a public feed did post at least one message in the last 7 days, indicating that these accounts are still alive. This percentage (52%) is significantly higher than the percentages of active users observed for the European countries.

Conclusion
This state of the Brazilian Twitosphere is only a snapshot, meaning that the figures mentioned in this post have already changed because the Twitosphere is a very dynamic environment with several new accounts being created every day, new connections being made between accounts (following/followers) and of course new messages being written every hour of the day.

Users from Brazil were among the first to start using Twitter (from July 2006). There was a sharp increase in the number of Twitter users in Brazil from mid April 2007, about at the same time as for the analyzed European countries. The main difference is that the growth continues for Brazil, whereas the growth slowed down for the European countries. The creation of new Twitter accounts in Brazil seems even to accelerate from the beginning of August 2007.

The current Twitter community in Brazil is increasing day by day, the percentage of active Twitter accounts is higher than in the analyzed European countries. The future for Twitter in Brazil looks bright.