IndiPR

The Toronto based, social media monitoring agency, Sysomos published its second ‘Exploring the Use of Twitter Around the World’ report and put Indonesia in the number six spot of twenty global ranking list of countries with the most users with 2.41 percent of all users of the service. The only other Asian country that made the top twenty list is the Philippines which ranked 15th with 1.08 percent .

Topping the list of Sysomos study is the United States with more than 62 percent of the total twitter users in the world. The study does not show exactly how many active users in each country. However, according to Twitdir website, Indonesia has more than 13,213 active users way below the US users of 89,860.

Based on the amount of activities Indonesia also ranked sixth in the world with 2.34 percent of the total twitter conversation. Singapore ranked 12th (0.88 percent), the Philippines 13th (0.85 percent) while Malaysia earned the 18th spot with 0.47 percent.

Jakarta is the sole Asian representative in the top twenty list of cities with 0.58% of Twitter users and 0.8% of Twitter activity. Topping the list of cities with the most users and activities is New York.

Throughout 2009, Indonesia’s twitter users had grown significantly while Indonesian related topics like the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton suicide bombings and the death of local reggae artist Mbah Surip dominating conversations on the microblogging site.

Indonesia’s prominent blogger Atika Nurkoestanti said that the Jakarta terrorist attacks might have contributed to twitter’s popularity as the topic of “Indonesia Unite”, which served as an encouragement to boost people’s morale after the bombing, was adopted by major television and radio stations.

“Secondly, there are a lot of celebrities and public figures that started to tweet. Naturally their fans also joined twitter as the new hip thing,” she said adding that the emergence of smart phones like Blackberry and IPhones also contributed to the website’s popularity.

Another prominent blogger, Dimas Novriandi said that twitter facilitates Indonesians’ passion to socialize and take it online. “Basically, Indonesians love to chat. I see twitter will stay popular in Indonesia as long as twitter keeps giving new innovations,” he said.

Indonesians also utilize twitter for social causes like the case of Prita Mulyasari, a mother of two that was arrested last year for sending an email complaining about a care from a hospital. The case attracted the attention of the media and eventually the public after the word circulated around twitter and social networking site Facebook.

Social media expert, Aditya Fajar said that twitter has become an effective medium to advocate change. “Twitter brings people with a common sense of purpose and shared struggle closer,” he said. “But whether twitter is a hype or is here to stay remains to be seen.”

Sysomos noted that twitter is not popular in countries like Japan and China with the major barrier being language. Twitter does not accommodate non-Roman scripts very well, making those countries developing their own Twitter like service.

Nivell Rayda is a Jakarta based writer and Viral Communicator for InDiPR

Follow me on Twitter