Twitter Hits Over 200 Million Active Users

The social media and micro-blogging service, Twitter on its officially page announced that it now has over 200 million monthly active users.

The news rounds off an important year for Twitter, which has played a major role in some of the key events of 2012, including the London Olympic Games and Barack Obama's re-election in United State of America.

In March, Twitter officially turned six years old (it was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July). At that time, the company announced 140 million MAUs who were sending 340 tweets per day. That means that Twitter has grown by around 60 million MAUs in about nine months.

It could be recalled that on September 8 2011, Twitter crossed over 100 million active users. At that time, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that about half of Twitter’s MAUs log on every day.

Advertising revenues at Twitter grew 213% to $139.5 million in 2011—the company’s second full year of selling advertising—and strong international growth is expected to push the company’s ad revenues to $259.9 million in 2012, according to a forecast by eMarketer.

Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet." Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of apps for mobile devices.