Twitter continues to grow around the globe at a record pace. Just a year ago, we delivered 65 million Tweets a day. Today, we generate over 200 million Tweets per day. One year ago, there were approximately 150,000 registered Twitter apps. Now, there are more than one million that connect to Twitter. And our team has grown from 250 people to more than 600 in the past 12 months.

More importantly, Twitter is where people around the globe come to instantly connect to what’s most meaningful to them. This makes Twitter the only place in the world to get a real-time pulse on what people are thinking and doing practically anywhere.

We’ve come very far in a short time. Now we have an opportunity to expand Twitter’s reach with a significant round of funding led by the venture firm DST Global, with the participation of several of our existing investors. We will use these resources to aggressively innovate, hire more great people and invest in international expansion.

Thank you for everything you’ve done to help get us here and for inspiring us to work even harder. We can’t wait for you to see what we have planned to make Twitter even better.

Twitter celebrated its first non-English launch in April 2008 with the release of Twitter in Japanese. In November 2009, Twitter launched it’s second and third languages: Spanish and French. And, with today’s launch of Dutch and Indonesian, Twitter has been fully translated into eleven languages.

Dutch and Indonesian were the first languages to be fully translated by community volunteers using our Translation Center that opened earlier in the year. Volunteers translate twitter.com, support pages, desktop and mobile applications — everything except the Tweets. Then, a select group of the most active translators work closely with the team at Twitter to maintain localized versions of the service.

Thanks to the active and growing Twitter community (200,000 translators and counting), the launch of today’s two languages is our fastest to date. From the first calls for community involvement to today’s launch, the localization process for Dutch and Indonesian took just one month. We will be using this new process to translate Twitter into many more languages soon. Next up: Filipino and Malay. If you speak one of these (or other) languages, visit our Translation Center to contribute to Twitter’s localization efforts.

We all come to Twitter to connect with the latest information on the topics and people we care about. So when we decide to follow a favorite brand, business or charitable organization, we expect to be among the first to get a special announcement, access to exclusive content or a great offer.

That's why starting today, we're introducing a way to ensure that the most important Tweets from the organizations you follow reach you directly, by placing them at or near the top of your timeline. These Promoted Tweets will scroll through the timeline like any other Tweet, and like regular Tweets, they will appear in your timeline just once. Promoted Tweets can also be easily dismissed from your timeline with a single click.

We’ll be rolling out and testing this new offering over the next several weeks with a select group of partners, including Best Western, Dell, Gatorade, Groupon, HBO, JetBlue, LivingSocial, Microsoft Xbox, Red Bull, Sephora, Starbucks, Summit Entertainment’s “50/50”, TNT and Virgin America among others — with more to come soon. During this phase, you may also see Promoted Tweets in your timeline from non-profit organizations you follow, including charity: water, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Room to Read, The American Red Cross and Water.org.

From the start, our philosophy around advertising has been simple: We put our users first and strive to create products that enrich the Twitter experience for every Twitter user. We’re excited about this next step and look forward to your feedback.

We are often asked the question, "How do I keep my Twitter account safe and private?" Good question, and we’re happy you asked.

First, you should know that attempts to directly “hack" Twitter are extremely rare. The majority of account compromises actually happen as a direct result of "phishing" schemes. Phishing is a way to target users by sending them fraudulent messages meant to trick them into sharing their passwords. This can come in the form of fake emails, attachments or log-in screens that are designed to look similar to your Twitter sign-in page.

You should know that Twitter never sends emails that request your password or asks you to download attachments. Similarly, you will never have to enter your Twitter password into anything other than a Twitter log-in screen on the web and applications that you trust. You can always make sure that you’re on the real Twitter site by checking the address bar in your browser--make sure the domain is Twitter.com. There is lot more about protecting yourself from phishing attempts on our support pages.

Here are some additional important recommendations from our Safety Center:

• Use a strong password with at least 10 characters and a combination of letters, numbers and other characters for your Twitter account. And use a unique password for each website you use (email, banking, etc.); that way, if one account gets compromised, the rest are safe. A personal email account that’s compromised is the second most likely way an intruder gains access to Twitter accounts.
• Use HTTPS for improved security on Twitter. This is the same encryption technology that allows you to safely make payments online. Learn how to do this here.
• We recommend linking your phone to your Twitter account. Doing this could save your account if you lose control of your personal email and/or password. Here’s how to do it.
• If you think your account has been compromised, visit our help page for compromised accounts to find out how to fix it quickly.

We’re committed to keeping Twitter a safe and open community and educating you, our users, about the best ways to keep your accounts secure. We post regular updates about safety and security via @safety and regularly update our account security help page. For individuals and organizations using Twitter in an official capacity, Twitter for Newsrooms has been updated with an excellent safety and security checklist, located here.

Today we’re releasing the latest version of Twitter for Android. It includes some of the most commonly requested features from our users.

First, we now offer push notifications. Push notifications let you instantly receive Twitter updates – no matter what you’re doing on your phone. In your account settings, select “automatic refresh” and choose to receive updates for Direct Messages, @Mentions (from the people you follow or anyone), and Tweets.

You can also now use multiple accounts on Twitter for Android without ever logging out. It’s easy to switch between accounts to discover and share what’s happening in the world. Plus, we’ve updated the appearance of home screen widgets and added a bunch of other improvements and bug fixes.

You can download this updated version of Twitter for Android now from Android Market.

Application developers play a fundamental role in helping people get the best out of Twitter. As an ecosystem, we’ve just crossed one million registered applications, built by more than 750,000 developers around the world. This is up from 150,000 apps just a year ago.  A new app is registered every 1.5 seconds, fueling a spike in ecosystem growth in the areas of analytics, curation and publisher tools.

Investors and businesses are taking note. Since December 2010, more than $500 million has been invested in ecosystem companies, and more than a billion dollars has been paid out in acquisitions. This level of investment is indicative of the opportunity for developers and entrepreneurs to build successful businesses as part of the Twitter platform.

Apps help people understand and make the most of Twitter, whether they’re on the web, on mobile, and even watching television.  A few examples:

• Mass Relevance combed through more than 160,000 Tweets to bring the White House’s first Twitter Town Hall to life though real-time content curation and visualization.
• Trendrr evaluated the sentiment of Tweets about sci-fi thriller SUPER8 to measure the film’s blockbuster $38 million opening weekend.
• Datasift just announced $6M in new funding today for the work they do to make the Twitter firehose accessible to any developer.
• Poptweets created an addictive iPhone trivia game that challenges players to match Tweets with the famous people who said them.
• Radian6 turned its brand monitoring tools into a thriving business and was recently acquired by Salesforce for $326 million.

The entire Twitter team is committed to investing in the ecosystem by listening to developers and enabling them with the right tools and information. Today we’re introducing a new Twitter Developer site, where anyone in the ecosystem can start building with Twitter, connect directly with Twitter team members, exchange ideas with fellow developers, and find all the resources they need to create their own product or business.

Tomorrow at 2pm Eastern Time, the White House will hold its first Twitter Town Hall, and United States President Barack Obama will answer Twitter users’ questions about the American economy — live at askobama.twitter.com.

On Twitter you can find real-time conversations and information about every subject imaginable from across the world, including robust debate about the economy. In fact, a study announced today by Salesforce.com's Radian6 found that financial security is one of the most frequent topics of political conversation on Twitter. Tomorrow’s Town Hall is an invitation from the White House for anyone on Twitter to participate in an open exchange about the national and global economic issues facing the United States.

Questions addressed during the Town Hall will be selected both in advance and in real-time during the event. To narrow down the list of popular, relevant questions to ask on behalf of Twitter users, we’re doing the following:

• We’ve partnered with Mass Relevance to curate, visualize and integrate conversations for the event.
• Algorithms behind Twitter search will identify the Tweets that are most engaged with via Retweets, Favorites and Replies.
• A team of seasoned Twitter users with experience discussing the economy will help flag questions from their communities through retweets.

To have your voice heard, tweet your questions on the economy and be sure to include the hashtag #AskObama.  You can track the conversation in three great ways: Watch the event live at http//askobama.twitter.com,  follow live Tweets from @townhall, or search the hashtag #AskObama.

Halfway through 2011, users on Twitter are now sending 200 million Tweets per day. For context on the speed of Twitter’s growth, in January of 2009, users sent two million Tweets a day, and one year ago they posted 65 million a day.

For perspective, every day, the world writes the equivalent of a 10 million-page book in Tweets or 8,163 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Reading this much text would take more than 31 years and stacking this many copies of War and Peace would reach the height of about 1,470 feet, nearly the ground-to-roof height of Taiwan’s Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world.


A billion Tweets are sent every five days. What’s in them? Everything about every topic imaginable – whether it’s a unique bird’s-eye view of the Shuttle launch as seen from an airplane window or cheers of support for soccer teams in this year’s Champions League tournament. Using Twitter helped a homeless man reunite with his daughter, sent two Cincinnati Reds fans to spring training on a player’s dime, and even helped residents of a small city in Korea find fresh water after its supply was cut off.

And, here are the top Trending Topics for the first half of 2011, divided into the two most popular categories:

World events/News

1. AH1N1 - Swine Flu
2. Mubarak - former Egyptian President
3. Easter - Christian holiday
4. Cairo - capital of Egypt
5. #prayforjapan - sentiment following the March earthquake and tsunami
6. Chernobyl - site of nuclear disaster in 1986
7. Libia/Libya - site of an ongoing civil war
8. Fukushima - Japanese nuclear power plant
9. William & Kate - Newly-named Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
10. Gadafi - Libyan political leader

Pop culture

1. Rebecca Black - pop singer
2. Femme Fatale - newly-released Britney Spears album
3. Charlie Sheen - actor
4. #tigerblood - hashtag popularized by Charlie Sheen
5. Nate Dogg - rapper
6. Anderson Silva - Brazilian mixed martial artist
7. Tom & Jerry - famous cartoon
8. Mumford & Sons - British rock band
9. Bieber alert - referring to artist Justin Bieber
10. Queen Gaga - referring to artist Lady Gaga