Twitter on Track to Lead Social Networking in Japan

Social networking site Twitter grew its unique audience in Japan by a whopping 428 percent in the 12 months ending September 2010, and will likely end the year as the most popular social networking site in the country, according to data from comScore.

The site attracted 13.2 million unique users in September, closely following rival site Mixi.jp which saw 13.5 million visitors but has seen its growth plateau since March. Given its strong growth, it appears Twitter will therefore overtake Mixi by December at the latest.

Despite its dominance in the social networking space in the U.S. and the U.K., Facebook continues to attract a fraction of the Japanese audience achieved by Mixi and Twitter. It has enjoyed growth, though, increasing its user base by 78 percent during the year ending September, reaching 5.3 million unique visitors, comScore said.