Jakarta (The Jakarta Post/ANN) ' Indonesia has earned the title of fifth most active nation on the micro-blogging website, while the country's capital, Jakarta, has emerged as the most active Twitter city in the world, beating major cities like Tokyo, London and New York, a recent survey indicates.
The Paris-based research company, Semiocast, revealed that 29.4 million Twitter account profiles originated from Indonesia by early June, displaying a 50 per cent rise compared to numbers in 2011.
The United States retains its lead in terms of a user base, with 141.8 million accounts, which makes up 27.4 per cent of the Twitter population. "The United States still dominates Twitter nations, but growth is higher abroad," Semiocast wrote in their study.
Brazil, with a user base of 41.2 million, assumed second place, pushing Japan to third. The United Kingdom took fourth place with 32.2 million accounts, leading Indonesia by 2.8 million users. However, the study rated Twitter users residing in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital city, as "the most active within all cities ranked by the number of posted tweets".
"Twenty-seven per cent of all public tweets were geo-localised at the city level. More than 2 per cent of all these tweets were posted from the capital of Indonesia, witnessing the activity of Twitter in the country," Semiocast wrote.
Jakarta has thus beat Tokyo, London, Sao Paulo and New York in terms of tweet activity. Jakarta's neighbouring city and Indonesia's second largest metropolitan area ' Bandung ' ranked sixth.
The Twitter-happy tendencies of Jakartans was evident yesterday, a day after Semiocast released their study. #10MakananKhasIndo and #RemajaIndonesiaAugustWish became trending topics, as Indonesians chattered about the themes in all tones.
Wimar Witoelar, a communication consultant with over 120,000 followers, said that he posted on Twitter "whatever comes to my mind, although I do maintain decorum". "I tweet like I talk," he noted.
The former spokesman to past president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid said that he tweeted topics he was passionate about ' from the Union for Independent People (SRI) Party to Arsenal soccer club.
Ulil Abshar Abdalla, the co-founder of the Liberal Islam Network, who proclaims a love of "jokes, doughnuts and banana cake" through Twitter, said he tweeted more about light topics. "I know people expect me to tweet about religion and politics," he told The Jakarta Post. "But I try to balance the serious with the comical."
He added that he has even hit the Twitter limit of 100 messages per day. "People are utilising the social media according to their cultural characteristic, which is one that is transitioning from oral to written modes of communication," he said.
Witoelar added that Indonesia was an "open and less private society", and that was why everyone talked on Twitter. "People in Jakarta lack the time to socialise [physically] and so, they substitute it with Twitter," he said.
