Twitter hits 10m UK users

Micro-messaging site Twitter has celebrated signing up its ten millionth active user in the UK as the site continues to grow in popularity.

It means Britain has the fourth largest user base for the service, behind only the US, Brazil and Japan, while it also stated it has reached 140 million users around the world.

People in the UK may also be keener to access the service when on the move compared with those in other countries.

Globally, the site said 55 per cent of its traffic comes from mobile devices, but in the UK, this rises to 80 per cent.

The figures were released to mark the first anniversary of the service opening operations in the UK and it has been an eventful 12 months for the company.

Last summer, it was in the news after claims it had helped incite violence by allowing participants in the England riots to communicate with each other, though subsequent studies suggested this was not the case.

It also made headlines when users broke a series of ‘superinjunctions’ taken out by celebrities to prevent their names being published.

In the most high-profile of these, thousands of individuals defied a court order to name Ryan Giggs as taking out an injunction to stop details of an affair being revealed.

This led to several commentators observing current privacy laws are not adequate for dealing with social media sites such as Twitter.

In an interview with the BBC to mark the milestone, UK general manager at Twitter Tony Wang said the firm is keen to work closer with policymakers by hiring a public policy manager to work alongside “the government, various ministries, members of parliament, as well as law enforcement”.

However, he stressed the key priority of the firm is to “protect and defend” the rights of its users to exercise free speech.

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