Microblogging site Twitter says that mobile use of its services “jumped 62 percent since mid-April,” with 46 percent of active users regularly accessing via mobile, driven by the availability of official Twitter apps for platforms including Android, BlackBerry and iOS. It says that, previously, “even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called ‘Twitter’”. This led the company to acquire Tweetie and rename it Twitter for iPhone, and to create Twitter for Android and Twitter for BlackBerry (developed by Research In Motion); a Twitter for iPad app has also recently been launched. In total, Twitter now has more than 145 million registered users.

Currently, 16 percent of users new to Twitter sign-up from a mobile app, up from 5 percent before the launch of Twitter-branded products. Overall use of the service is still dominated by the Web, with 78 percent of unique users logging-on via Twitter.com, and the mobile website is used by 14 percent of members – Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for BlackBerry jointly are used by 15 percent. SMS also plays an important role, being used by 8 percent of unique visitors, the same as Twitter for iPhone.