RAAK

The graph shows how many accounts have been registered on Twitter* (the graph updates every minute).

It also shows at which point certain users joined Twitter. You can pinpoint any Twitter user account registration on the graph yourself.

Click the graph for a full-sized version

Analysis

Two moments in the growth of Twitter stand out. Around March 2007 it had its first major spurt in registration rates when it won the SXSW web award to great excitement. Then, two years later, in March 2009 it had what is often called its hockey stick moment – and accelerated dramatically for a second time.

From then on the registration rate has slowly but surely accelerated even more. There are no more major surges in registration, even the Twitter integration in Apple’s millions of iOS devices has not created a clear new inflection point. But the ever faster trend bearing upwards is a glorious bending arch.

*Why is there a gap in the graph?

Note there is an approximate 50 million gap in Twitter account IDs around July 2012. We are not sure why Twitter made this jump in allocating IDs but it happened around the time when they announced changes to their API. We also suspect that Twitter is no longer allocating IDs in sequence, but rather skipping every other number. In other words, the growth after the gap might appear to happen twice as fast as it did before.

** Also note that this graph will include accounts that have been deleted, dormant or bots. But it’s impressive none the less.

Read how this dynamic Twitter registration graph is generated.