Twitter approaches half billion accounts

Twitter could be set to have it's 500 millionth account as early as next month - that's all accounts, not active ones - as the micro blogging service is adding an impressive 11 accounts per second and not showing any sign of slowing up in its popularity at attracting new users.

Twitter currently has around 465 million accounts - up 65% since last May - and when you consider that it's blocked in China the growth is all the more impressive.

In September Twitter announced that the active user base has passed 100 million, and whilst it's well short of Facebook (which is rushing towards a billion active accounts), when you add the 249.9m micro blogging accounts on rival services Tencent and Sina in China it's evident that such services are very, very popular indeed.