• Read Write Web, Tuesday, December 23, 2008 11 AM

Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick reckons it would take Twitter at current growth estimates 36 years to catch up to Facebook in terms of users if Facebook stopped growing today. Kirkpatrick arrives at that conclusion after looking at a report from marketing firm HubSpot on the state of Twitter at the end of 2008. The HubSpot report came out just days after Facebook posted staggering new growth numbers of more than 600,000 new users per day.

Twitter, meanwhile, has just 4-5 million total users, 30% of which are either new or hardly engaged. HubSpot estimates that Twitter sees between five and ten thousand new accounts opened each day, making the microblogging sensation "a fascinating little phenomenon" compared to Facebook, which Kirkpatrick says is "mainstream." In fact, Facebook grows another Twitter's worth of new users every 8 days.

Other Twitter facts: 38% of users haven't uploaded a picture of themselves to their profile. Twenty-two percent of users have between 0 and 5 followers, while 9% of users don't follow anyone at all. A hefty 20% of Twitter's total user base joined within the last 60 days, meaning that Twitter is on pace to double in less than a year. Bottom line, Kirkpatrick says, is that as much as hardcore users and the media like Twitter, "its image far outweighs its numbers...and there's no reason to believe that's going to change soon."

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