30 Terrific Twitter Facts and Figures

1. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched in July of that year.
2. Twitter’s origins lie in a “day long brainstorming session” that was held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. While sitting in a park on a children’s slide and eating Mexican food, Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group.
3. The first Twitter prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo employees and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006
4. The original project code name for the service was ‘twttr‘, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by the name of the social media image website ‘Flickr’ and the five-character length of American SMS short codes.
5. The team finally settled on the name ‘twitter‘, which means ‘chirps from birds’ in essence ‘a short burst of inconsequential information’
6. The tipping point for Twitter’s popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000.
7. It had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007
8. In 2008 there were only 3 million registered users
9. In 2008 there were only 1.25 million tweets per day
10. Jan 2008  there were only 8 employees
11. In 2009 or 3 years ago  had 8 million registered users
12. In 2011 there are now over 400 employees
13. 75% of Twitter traffic comes from third-party applications
14. 60% of all tweets come from third-party apps
15. There are over 100,000 Twitter applications
16. A Forrester report revealed  that “Twitterers are the connected of the connected, overindexing at all Social Media habits.  For example, Twitterers are three times more likely to be Creators (people who create and share content via blog posts and YouTube) as the general US population” (source Forrester report “Who Flocks to Twitter”)
17. 3 years, 2 months and 1 day…the time it took from the first tweet to the billionth tweet.
18. It now takes one week for users to send a billion Tweets.
19. In March 2010 the average number of tweets people sent per week was the the 350 million.
20. 140 million is the average number of tweets people sent per day in February 2011
21. 177 million tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
22. When Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 there were 456 tweets per second (TPS)…a record at that time.
23. The current TPS record is 6,939 tweets per second set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day
24. 572,000 is the number of new accounts created in one day (March 12, 2011)
25. 460,000 is the average number of new accounts per day created in February, 2011
26. 182% is the increase in number of mobile users over the past year.
27. In March 2011 there are an estimated 225 million users
28. 25 billion tweets sent on Twitter in 2010
29. 100 million new accounts added on Twitter in 2010
30. The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010

50 Facebook Facts and Figures

1. 1 in every 13 people on Earth is on Facebook
2. 35+ demographic represents more than 30% of the entire user base
3. 71.2 % of all USA internet users are on Facebook
4. In 20 minutes 1,000,000 links are shared on Facebook
5. In 20 minutes 1,484,000 event invites are posted
6. In 20 minutes 1,323,000 photos are tagged
7. In 20 minutes 1,851,000 status updates are entered
8. In 20 minutes 1.972 million friend requests are accepted
9. In 20 minutes 2,716,000 photos are uploaded
10. In 20 minutes 2,716,000 messages are sent
11. In 20 minutes 10.2 million comments are posted
12. In 20 minutes 1,587,000 wall posts are written
13. 750 million photos were uploaded to Facebook over New Year’s weekend
14. 48% of young Americans said they found out about news through Facebook
15. 48% of 18 to 34 year olds check Facebook right when they wake up
16. 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
17. Average user has 130 friends
18. People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
19. There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
20. Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
21. Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
22. More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
23. More than 70 translations available on the site
24. About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
25. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application
26. Entrepreneurs and developers from more than 190 countries build with Facebook Platform
27. People on Facebook install 20 million applications every day
28. Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites
29. Since social plugins launched in April 2010, an average of 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day
30. More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook, including over 80 of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites
31. There are more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
32. People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
33. There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products
34. Al Pacino’s face was on the original Facebook homepage
35. One early Facebook function was a file sharing service
36. The first “Work Networks” as well as the original educational networks  included Apple and Microsoft
37. The meaning of the term poke has never been defined
38. There is an ‘App’ to see what’s on the Facebook cafe menu
39. Mark Zuckerburg (CEO of Facebook) calls himself a “Harvard Graduate” when in fact he didn’t graduate (apparently his reply is that “there isn’t a setting for dropout”)
40. Australian’s spend more time per month on Facebook than any other country at over 7 hours on average
41. A Facebook employee hoodie sold for $4,000 on eBay
42. Facebook was initially bank-rolled by Peter Thiel the co-founder of PayPal for $500,000
43. It is the second biggest website by traffic behind Google (at the moment)
44. Facebook is now valued at approximately $80 billion
45. Facebook makes money through advertising  and virtual products
46. Facebook was almost shut down by a lawsuit by ConnectU who claimed that Zuckerburg stole the idea and Technology for Facebook (the issue was settled out of court)
47. The USA has the largest Facebook user base with 155 million people which represents 23.6% of Facebook’s total users
48. There is over 16,000,000 Facebook fan pages
49. Texas Hold’em Poker is the most popular Facebook page with over 41 million fans
50. More than 650 million active users