Japanese graphic designer registers 20 billionth tweet

by Steven Mostyn - Aug 2 2010, 13:10

Pushing its own seemingly unstoppable momentum whilst also highlighting its blossoming international appeal, micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter has now surpassed 20 billion tweets – a landmark achievement registered by a graphic designer from Japan.

Considering Twitter’s storming popularity in Japan – where some eight million tweets are dispatched on a daily basis – it’s perhaps not much of a surprise to find that Tokyo-based user ‘GGGGGGo_Lets_Go’ captured himself a little slice of online history at 12:44 a.m. local time Sunday morning (11:44 a.m. EDT Saturday).

“It looks like I posted the 20 billionth tweet. I’m getting replies from people all over the world. It’s scary,” wrote user GGGGGGo_Lets_Go in response to bringing Twitter to its latest milestone (as translated by Computerworld).

“What are the chances? Maybe I’m going to die,” he added. “Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke.”

Although statistics aren’t necessarily required – we all know how popular Twitter has become – it’s taken a little over four years for the social service to reach 20 billion tweets, and only five months for the site’s official tweet count to double from 10 billion.

One of the reasons Twitter is proving to be so popular in Japan is that it's possible to say much more in Japanese than in English within the service's 140-character tweet limit.

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