Twitter Skyrocketing in Russia (Stats)

Of course no one will argue these days that Twitter has become a huge online phenomenon and it influences lots of things for both end users, online and offline businesses. But how huge is it outside of the US where the trendy service is heavily promoted in traditional media?

Russian internet giant Yandex has recently released the statistics (in Russian) regarding Twitter usage in Russia and Russian-language internet segment in general and it proves that while Twitter is probably not really huge, its growth rates are so impressive that we should really expect it to become an international online phenomenon as well – and soon.

First of all, Yandex is currently aware of 183 thousand Russian-language accounts on Twitter. Unfortunately it is impossible to claim that this is the exact number of Russian Twitter users as I guess there are quite a number of accounts (mine included) that use English language for some personal or professional reasons and also I’d guess that many people will have multiple accounts because Russian users seem to have learned how to use (and abuse) Twitter for marketing and sales purposes even before Twitter grew actually popular in the country.

It is also worth noting that Russian users are rather active on Twitter as 60% update their microblogs with new tweets daily instead of sticking to the usual online policy of listening more than contributing. This makes me think that an average Russian users is more active than an average Twitter user in general as one third of all Twitter users never tweeted in their lives and 76% of users have less than 5 tweets overall. Also Russian users are very fond of sharing as 67% of all the Twitter updates contain hyperlinks with 8% of all the updates being links to various online publishers.

Yet the most intriguing thing about Twitter that no one seems to ever be tired to discuss is its growth rates – and in Russia it is definitely worth noting. Over this winter the number of Russian-language Twitter users has increased by 46% while the overall growth by 26 times over the last year (March 2009 through March 2010) is definitely difficult to ignore.

The most impressive thing is that unlike the US where you see Twitter discussed in the newspapers and on TV and every consumer company having a link to their Twitter profile in a prominent position on their corporate website, in Russia it definitely does not get any comparable level of attention. Only once in a while we see it mentioned on some geek-targeted TV show and only the most tech-aware newspapers and TV channels actually have their news broadcast to Twitter – and advertise their Twitter streams elsewhere.

The only example that I have personally seen myself of Twitter appearing in a place where you would not really expect to see it was a whole page discussing the microblogging tool in the Russian version of Cosmopolitan – though I have no idea how to evaluate any traffic growth from Russian women to Twitter following the publication.

But even without any mass support of Twitter by Russian traditional media the growth rates are impressive enough not to notice it which makes me think that the rumors about pending localization of Twitter into Russian really have a solid base – and we should expect a real explosion when such localization is actually launched though it will not prevent me from wondering exactly how Twitter will be monetizing this huge crowd on the other side of the ocean.