It has been accused of proliferating pointless babble online and the 20 billionth message on Twitter will have done little to rebut such criticism.
The exact meaning of the landmark tweet on Saturday by a graphic designer in Tokyo is difficult to work out as it was part of a larger conversation: “So that means the barrage might come back later all at once.”
But his reaction to having sent the 20-billionth tweet since the microblogging site launched in July 2006 was much easier to understand.
“It looks like I posted the 20-billionth tweet. I’m getting replies from people all over the world. It’s scary. What are the chances? Maybe I’m going to die. Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke,” he wrote moments later.
Twitter’s popularity in Japan has soared in the past year with the company estimating that the Japanese send about 12% of all tweets worldwide, second only to the US.
One reason for this surge is that it is possible to say much more in Japanese than in English within Twitter’s 140 character limit. Twitter activity reached an all time high of 3 283 tweets per second during the Japan-Denmark game in this year’s Soccer World Cup.
It is just two months since Twitter’s 15-billionth tweet and only five months since the ten billionth, which took four years to reach. Worldwide about 300 000 users are signing up for new accounts every day. – guardian.co.uk