Japanese send 7,000 tweets per second on New Year
Twitter's growth into the tricky Japanese market was confirmed earlier this month when on New Year's Day some 6,939 tweets per second were being sent, a new record for Twitter. And now the most popular tweeters from Japan have been revealed, with Softbank president Masayoshi Son and artist Yoko Ono proving the most popular.
Japan's record achievement beat the previous record, also by Japanese, of 3,283 tweets a second following the country's national football team victory over Denmark in the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
In comparison, the coming of the new year on the east cost of the United States recorded 3,000 tweets per second.
Like Facebook, Twitter took time to catch on in Japan.
Amassing followers
Despite the slow take up of Twitter in Japan, due to the country's unique take on media and technological devices, by February 2010 the Japanese language had become the second most popular on the service, at 14 percent.
Of users from Japan, Yoko Ono, who tweets in English, has the most followers worldwide, with 1,164,487 as of today, where her most recent tweet is "I love dancing. I think it's better to dance than to march through life".
Masayoshi Son, entrepreneur and president of phone giant Softbank -- which releases the iPhone in Japan -- is the most popular tweeter in Japanese, with 736,671 followers.
Other notable twitterers include former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama (668,660) and former Livedoor president Takafumi Horie (562,683).
In the celebrity world, pop singer Utada Hikaru, who recently took an indefinite hiatus from her career, has amassed 383,450 followers, while porn star Sola Aoi, who has a strong following in China, clocks in at nearly 150,000.
