Twitter adding 300,000 new users per day

Microblogging service Twitter announced that it now boasts close to 106 million registered users--up more than 1,500 percent over a year ago--and continues to add 300,000 new users each day. Speaking at the company's first Chirp developer conference in San Francisco, Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone added that Twitter now fields 55 million tweets and 600 million search queries per day. Despite the popularity of the service, Williams said the firm is still seeking ways to make Twitter more mainstream, adding that when consumers begin to type "I don't get..." into Google search, "I don't get Twitter" is the second suggestion, followed only by "I don't get drunk I get awesome."

The Chirp event follows on the heels of Twitter's recent acquisition of Atebits, developer of the Tweetie client for iPhone. The Atebits deal heralds a new approach for Twitter, which historically has focused on its website and related services while leaving work on mobile software applications to third-party developers. Williams attempted to assuage developer anxieties over the change in direction: "You guys have not only made Twitter better, you've helped shape it," he said. "You've helped define what it is for us and millions of users." Nevertheless, Williams said Twitter must assume greater control over the user experience: "I know this was a controversial decision to many people because there were other Twitter apps on this platform," Williams said during his keynote speech. "There are fantastic companies and we love the innovation happening there. But when we did the research we found we were really under-serving our users. We had to have a core experience on major [mobile] platforms just like we have to have one on the web."

Hours prior to Chirp, Twitter also introduced Promoted Tweets, a new advertising solution featuring ads that show up when users search for keywords tied to marketing campaigns. At Chirp, Twitter announced another new feature: Points of Interest, enabling users to click on geotagged tweets to identify nearby users, offering a real-time perspective on what's happening in a particular space. Williams said Points of Interest is not intended to "duplicate the functionality of [mobile social networking services] Foursquare or Gowalla" but to "make those services work better with Twitter... What we really care about is the content happening at that place."

For more on Twitter's evolution:
- read this Wall Street Journal article

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