Twitter Membership Rises To 145 Million Users With Mobile Apps

Twitter has experienced a rocket-like boost to its 145 million users, up from 105 million in April, thanks in part to its bevy of mobile apps and growing ranks of mobile users, executives said.

Altogether, mobile usage on the micro-blogging site has increased 62 percent since mid-April, while 16 percent of all Twitter users say they started using the service on their mobile phone, up from 5 percent before the company launched its first mobile-branded client. In addition, 46 percent of active users make the mobile clients a regular part of their Twitter experience, said Twitter co-founder Evan Williams in a blog post Thursday.

Meanwhile, in recent months Twitter has actively beefed up its mobile apps, Williams said. In April, the service acquired iPhone client Tweetie from third-party developer Atebits, and turned it into an official Twitter app, dubbed Twitter for iPhone.

Twitter also released clients for other mobile platforms, Twitter for BlackBerry and Twitter for Android, which experienced refreshes. Most recently, Twitter launched a new Apple iPad app, Twitter for iPad, targeting tablet users.

"This strategy has been quite successful," Williams wrote. "As we had hoped in April, these clients are bringing more people into Twitter, and, even better, they are attracting and retaining active users."

According to a chart on the blog post, showing how users have logged onto Twitter in the last 30 days, the vast majority of Twitter users -- 78 percent -- log on to the site via Twitter.com, while another 14 percent have accessed the site via mobile Twitter.com. Another 8 percent access Twitter via text messages. Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for BlackBerry came in at 8 percent and 7 percent respectively.

"As this data shows, while smartphone clients are important, there are even more people who use the mobile Twitter web site and/or SMS. We've been seeing strong growth in both of these areas," Williams said.

Meanwhile, third-party apps continue to play an important role in Twitter's overall usage. Another 4 percent access the site via TwitPic, 3 percent through TweetDeck and Echofan, and around 2 percent sign onto Twitter via Google Friend Connect and UberTwitter.

Williams called out TweetDeck users as "some of the most active and frequent."

While the number of mobile users decreases sharply after the top 10, Williams noted that other applications were gaining traction, possibly as a secondary or tertiary means for users to access Twitter, he speculated. For example, the number of registered OAuth applications has nearly tripled in the last four months to around 300,000.

"And, while the percentage of overall users drops off pretty sharply after the few listed here, there are a tremendous number of other apps that people are using, not necessarily as their main Twitter client, but as an alternative way to create or view Tweets," he said.

"It’s great to see this kind of variety and growth in the ecosystem as it moves beyond basic Twitter clients," Williams said. "These new services help people get the most out of Twitter, contributing to user growth and new business opportunities -- both of which are critical to the long-term viability of the ecosystem."