Twitter's fortunes has see-sawed over the past year: user growth and stock price has levelled, while Twitter has never released more new features that might turn its fortunes around.

So this week we're taking a look at the current state of play in the constantly evolving world of Twitter.

Stuck in the middle

Twitter remains the second most popular social platform and currently has 650 million registered users, with 135,000 newbies signing up every day.

This is around half that of Facebook (1.3 billion users) and over double that of LinkedIn (300 million users).

The average Twitter user has 208 followers.

Tweet all about it

Over a typical day these users generate 58 million tweets, or 9100 tweets per second.

These users are also a curious lot, with Twitter processing 2.1 billion search queries every day.

Mobile and third party

Interestingly, for a platform that started as an app 43 per cent of members use their phone to tweet, compared to over half of all Facebook users – highlighting the latter's successful shift to mobile.

And while Twitter is busy rolling out new features such as scheduling and reporting, 60 per cent of Twitter traffic still comes from third-party apps.

Lurkers

Lurkers remain a big part of the Twitter community (users who access Twitter but do not tweet). At last count lurkers accounted for 40 per cent of all Twitter users.

Recent updates such as push notifications are part of Twitter's push to bring lurkers into the conversation.

On another note, Twitter now accounts for 9 per cent of all selfies shared on social.

Global reach

Can you guess the country with the most Twitter users? It's China with 35.5 million.

Mo' money

In 2012 Twitter's annual revenue was US$259 million. This rose to US$405.5 million in 2013. 

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