How To Track Twitter’s Growth

A few month’s ago I decided to download Twitter’s iPhone app. One of the first things I noticed was that when you viewed a profile you could see the date they signed up & the account number.  

To verify that is what the number represented I checked Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey’s account and it showed the number 12. (Supposedly the first 10-11 accounts were junk accounts created to test the system.)

You can clearly see from the image his account was one of the first and by the date it looks to be the month and year Twitter launched.

To track Twitter’s growth I initially began clicking on Twitter profiles that were spam targeting me using the @reply method.

Since these accounts usually only last for a day or so I started looking at their sign up date and number. By doing this I could keep an eye on Twitter’s growth as spam accounts were almost always brand new.

I then later began to create new accounts so I could track more accurately.

To track Twitter’s Growth you will need an iPhone and the Twitter app.

You can then repeat the what I did to accurately gauge it for yourself.

Side note – It wouldn’t surprise me if this feature disappears soon from the iPhone app as Twitter has saved their growth numbers & reports for big announcements or conferences in the past.