Twitter is fastest-growing "web brand"

NEW YORK: Twitter, the microblogging service, was the fastest-growing "web brand" in the US in May 2009, when its user base increased in size by over 1,000% on an annual basis, figures from Nielsen Online, the internet research firm, show.

According to the company, the amount of time an average web user spent on blogs and social networking sites in the US increased by 67% in May.

The number of Americans using Twitter reached 18.2 million during this period, an upswing of 1,448% on the total of 1.2 million recorded in the fifth month of 2008.

The typical visitor to the "social messaging utility" spent 17 minutes 21 seconds on the site in May, up by 175% from 12 months previously, when this figure stood at 6 minutes 19 seconds.

However, the San Francisco-based service did see a slight slowdown in the monthly expansion rate of the overall number of "tweeters", with an improvement of just 7% compared with April this year.

Similarly, the normal "dwell" time on Twitter's website was largely static in May when measured against that for the previous month.

Facebook remains the top-ranked social network in the US in terms of users, with visitor numbers in May bettering those from the previous year by 190%, and climbing to 75.4 million.

MySpace was the best-performing social network in terms of online video use, with 12.2 million unique users streaming 116.1 million videos in May.

London, Berlin and Sydney will now become the main focus of its international operations, while its offices in nations including Brazil, Russia and Mexico are "under review."