The Philippine Online Chronicles

The little blue bird is chirping nonstop. Micro-blogging site Twitter has more than 100 million active users and plans to broaden its areas of services where adverts appear.

But Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said the company will remain independent and will not go public in the immediate future. “We want to be able to remain independent, grow the business the way we want to, and not be beholden to public markets until we feel like we want to be."

Costolo revealed that Twitter has 100 million active users logging in at least once a month and 50 million active users every day. Costolo said active users, who log on at least once a month, rose 82% this year. Twitter defines active users as “people who have logged in during the last 30 days via Twitter’s own apps or any third-party apps.

The executive said Twitter is 'super healthy and growing like a weed' especially on mobile platforms. He said the results had exceeded Twitter's expectations: "We now feel that based on the engagement rates we're seeing... that we're ready to expand this further." The San Francisco-based company raised its venture capital funding to $400-million this quarter.

Out of the total 200 million registered Twitter users, some 55 million users log on to from their phone or tablet every month. Web-based page views reached 400 million a month, up from 250 million at the beginning of the year. Only less than 40 percent of Twitter users have not tweeted in the last month, preferring to simply follow the timelines of others, according to the Costolo.

Costolo said that the company is working to turn passive Twitter users into active ones, as much as possible. “The 400 million monthly unique numbers shows that people are getting value out of Twitter without logging in,” Costolo said.

According to Mashable, Twitter hosts an estimate of billion tweets every five days, 230 million tweets every day. A new record was set and has hit a new record for tweets per second: 8,900 when Hurricane Irene hit New York and Beyonce announced her pregnancy on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards.

More adverts

Twitter will allow adverts on its promoted tweets service. Costolo said the business could work relying solely on advertising income: "It's our firm belief that our advertising platform is the only revenue component that we need to have in the market in order to be a huge independent business."

Twitter also plans to “simplify the product even further” and “edit out” any excess features and functions.

Power users

Twitter is currently seeing 5 billion Tweets every 5 days. In a blog post, Twitter revealed that leaders, athletes, humanitarians, entertainers and reporters are among the early adopters and recent converts to Twitter.

Twitter shared some interesting facts about its active members:

• Thirty-five global heads of state use Twitter as a primary way to communicate with their constituencies

• More than 40 percent of the top global religious leaders are on Twitter, including @DalaiLama and the Pope

• Every team in the NFL is on Twitter and more than 50% of NFL players

• 75% of NBA players

• 82% of the U.S. Congress and 85% of US Senators

• 87% of the Billboard Top 100 Musicians of 2010

• 93% of Food Network chefs

• 100% of the top 50 Nielsen-rated TV shows

• Over 99% of America's top 200 non-profits organizations

• 87% percent of Billboard’s Top 100 musicians of 2010

Twitter’s global reach gives a voice to people around the world and as far away as the International Space Station. Twitter will support 17 languages and will start to launch in Hindi, Filipino, Malay and Simplified and Traditional Chinese in the coming weeks.