London is the top tweet city in the world

Twitter is integrating search into the home pages of its users, according to co-founder Biz Stone who spoke to me earlier this week. I think Twitter is really going to take off into the mainstream as people see how they can easily pick through the deluge of tweets to find out what is happening in areas that interest them.

The other big news for UK Twitterers is that free SMS is going to be restored for the UK and other countries. Twitter has hired a mobile business development director and that is his first task.

London, according to the Google analytics Twitter gave me, is the top city for visitors to Twitter.com, ahead of any other American city. They said it accounted for 2 per cent of the traffic. (Twitter does not give out the basic numbers of visitors.) I must say Twitter found it surprising and so did I but London twitterers should be proud of themselves.

The full list, based on the last month of web usage and relying on Google Analytics' algorithm for determining cities, goes:

1. London
2. New York
3. San Francisco
4. Sao Paulo
5. Chicago
6. Seattle
7. Shibuya
8. Toronto
9. Brooklyn
10. West Hollywood

Jason at Twitter recommended I also mention Sydney at no 11 as "our Australian users our very proud of their usage of Twitter".

Twitter is now truly a global phenomenon.

Comments

[Simon Burgess]

Not only is Twitter truly a global phenomenon, it has, along with facebook, transcended the barriers of on and offline by becoming a major source for "serious" news stories from traditional news sources, such as The Times and the Guardian.

No one can doubt the power twitter had in the crisis in Mumbai last year with live updates from those on the ground not bound by the compromises made py press and tv (see Garza if you want an example).

Facebook too is now embraced by mainstream media (in what must amount t a certain extent to a cynical way of engaging with an audience bigger than any they can expect) and utilized in traditional or semi-traditional coverage. The most recent case in point was the CNN Inauguration coverage with a constant stream of facebook updates by its side through out its intirety.

I'm sure that this is a trend that is not likely to slow down, especially as it is more and more difficult to attract mass audiences like the ones twitter and facebook now reach.

[Philip Campbell]

that is very interesting actually and a good move for twitter to bring back the free texts. :)

[Andrew McCall]

Not that I doubt London has a high number of twitters but I think at least partially the numbers are going to be a bit skewed. Some UK ISPs, especially ones with dynamic IP addresses will show visitors as from London even if they're not.

I live in the north of England and use Virgin's ADSL service and my visits always show as London through Google Analytics.

[Natalia]

im sore