Speaking at a press conference last week, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed for the first time the micro-blogging site's number of active users - currently 100 million.
That figure is half the number of people who have registered Twitter accounts, and includes all types of users - including brands, media and individuals - who all log into the site at least once a month.
Costolo also revealed that as much as 40% of active users don't actually say anything on Twitter, and only log in to see what others are saying.
However, Twitter is growing from strength to strength, he said; with 50 million users reportedly logging in daily, and over 55% of the site's active users accessing the service via mobile devices.
Costolo noted he was confident the service would add 26 million active users between now and the end of the year.
The daily average number of tweets is up 110% since January, to about 230 million, and unique monthly visitors to the main site are also up 70%, to over 400 million.
Costolo also confirmed Promoted Tweets will soon be rolled out into everyone's Twitter streams, regardless of whether users follow the advertiser or not.
According to reports, Costolo said the Promoted Tweets would not be limited to the main site, but will find their way to the mobile applications and third-party apps too.
The statistics from Twitter place it well ahead of professional networking site LinkedIn. The site has an estimated 90 million users and, when it applied for its IPO listing early this year, admitted the majority of its registered users weren't actively using the service.
Facebook has recently passed the 750 million active user mark and, according to the social network, over 50% of those users log into the site daily.
However, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said at a press conference earlier this year that Facebook no longer tracks its progress in terms of numbers of users.
The metrics to watch now, according to Zuckerberg, are those that better reflect the idea of social as a platform - such as the number of items being shared.
Zuckerberg has formulated “Zuckerberg's Law”, which states that the volume of photos, status updates and other online material each individual posts on Facebook will double every year - which he says has been occurring on the social network.
If Zuckerberg is correct that the measure to watch is user sharing and engagement, new rival Google+ may not be doing as well as expected.
At the beginning of August, analytics firm ComScore released a report saying Google+ had reached 25 million users - despite being limited to an invitation-only model. That figure is now expected to be closer to 30 million, but official figures are yet to be released.
ComScore said at the time that Google+ is the fastest growing social network in history, yet the same report showed the site was seeing a decline in the number of daily visits.
Analysis from Experian Hitwise also showed the average number of minutes spent on Google+ peaked in mid-July and has been declining since.
Web strategist Eve Dmochowska says Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and any other “free” online app are all after one thing: engagement from the users.
“The more engagement there is, the more information (data) is left behind by the user, and the more time the app has to use that data to serve relevant ads and hope that they are clicked on. That is the basic business model of any social network.”
According to Dmochowska, the winners in this space will be those services that are best able to collect data, and use it to improve user experience and drive revenue.
“Google is the undisputed king of contextual advertising, but hasn't been strong on driving engagement with its social tools (except Gmail). Facebook and Twitter have the engagement, but their advertising platforms are weak when compared to Google's.”
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