According to a blog post on TwitterFacts, in 2008,  there were only 3429 Twitter users in Malaysia. Seems a bit low, yes? So it’s 2009 now, what’s the latest stats?

*This is a quick post, written after about 45 minutes of research. I will be updating this as I get more information.

Picture from MuhammadAmirul

Malaysia Boleh BerTwitter? One source seems to point that there are 120,000+ Malaysian Twitter users.

It’s 2009. Here’s some possibilities: According to Wefollow, there are 120,586 users tagged under Malaysia. (June 01, 2009). An article by @nikicheong in The Star (Malaysia), says that: ‘Taking into consideration the upward trend of new users worldwide (in the United States, there was a 131% increase between February and March this year, reports ComScore) and that many users do not disclose their location, it is a safe assumption that tens of thousands Malaysians are currently Twittering.‘

MohdIsmail thinks there is no way to know for sure. The WeFollow stats are very much dependent on people being honest about their location, and tagging themselves. But also to note, is that is possible the number can skew higher - not all the Malaysian Twitter users I know are on WeFollow. Why it’s a good number to base on:

• WeFollow is used by those who are mostly active on Twitter - not many newbies seem to be registered there.
• I follow quite a few of those there, and have met some in real life.
• There’s little incentive to create fake accounts and pretend you’re in Malaysia.
• There’s a fair number of famous Twitter users in Malaysia, including celebrities and businessmen.

Points of contention, why it might not be a good number:

• There may be bugs in how users are grouped on WeFollow. As you cannot see who are the lowest ranking users.
• The WeFollow tag page for Malaysia only goes all the way back to Page 8. The last user on that list #186, seems to have only 4 followers
• Some people do not disclose their real location - or it could be listed as Kuala Lumpur, Perak etc instead of Malaysia which makes searching by location difficult.

Other items worth noting:

Image from The Star

Malaysia is ranked #26 on TwitterScore, in a listing of top countries on Twitter.

There are at least 1000 Twitter users in Malaysia listed on TwitterHolic. As the list cuts off at 1000. To be fair it’s a listing of top users, so they don’t show the ones below.

Siapa Tweeter Yang Benar? ‘True’ Tweeters

Then you have that whole problem of which are the ‘true users’. The active users. Nielsen Online says that 60% of Twitter users (internationally) have stopped using the service after joining. Which means only 40% are active? Or less? For the purpose of this quick post, I will not go into this.

Are Malaysian Twitter users a vocal or significant enough crowd?

Image from Amanz.my

Are we a significant enough crowd? I think, yes. When a hot/controversial local piece of news, like Datuk Seri Mohamad Nizar Jamaluddin being announced as the Menteri Besar of Perak, it got into the Top 10 Trending Topics on Twitter as ‘Nizar’. ‘BarCampKL’ also became a trending topic before too. Source: (Amanz)

Things that this post does not (yet) cover, and other questions that arise (that need more research)

• How did TwitterFacts get his graphs on Malaysia? It’s not stated, and there seem to be no tools.
• What is the percentage of Malaysian followers for say, the top 100 Twitter users in Malaysia? This brings up an interesting question: How many of the top twitter users are popular in Malaysia? Some might be more popular with an international following, than locally.
• How do you define an active Twitter user? Tweet once a day at least? Once a week at least? Every other day?
• Several corporate accounts have presumably multiple users. Do you count user accounts or users?

* There is no conclusive answer yet. I will be updating this post frequently.

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