Surprisingly enough, now the fastest growing social media platform is not Pinterest (as it used to be), but Twitter, as reported by GlobalWebIndex. According to the study conducted across the 31 markets, the micro blogging platform is gaining momentum now and getting more active users than other social media platforms—the site is followed by Facebook and Google+, respectively.

Pic. Infographics on % change in social media platforms’ active users, from the study by GlobalWebIndex (click to enlarge)

The source reports that the number of active Twitter users rose 40% (288 million users) from the second to the fourth quarter in 2012 and now 21% of the global online population use Twitter actively on a monthly basis. In general, Twitter sees a giant growth in active users—714% since July 2009. The study has also revealed that 59% of Twitter account owners (v 50% in Q2 2012) are now active on a monthly basis.

Pic. Infographics on the percentage change in active behaviors for Twitter users, from the study by GlobalWebIndex (click to enlarge)

A huge portion of Twitter account holders are “passive active” users, meaning that they use the service to discover information but are not very active tweeters (only 51% of active users says they have posted a tweet in the past month). Users are less likely to comment about their daily activities from both PC and mobile, while the event organizing and full-length film watching activity generates most tweets via PC and tweets about purchasing a product or a device are most popular via mobile.

Pic. Infographics on the percentage change in active Twitter users across teh globe, from the study by GlobalWebIndex (click to enlarge)

Twitter has become more popular in the USA, Russia and China, but it was in Hong Kong where the micro blogging platform experienced the biggest rise—the number of active users there grew to 94% (to 33.8 million active users and 59 million account holders) Q2 v Q4 in 2012. As to the U.S. market, the rapid rise there is supported by three major pillars: mobile devices, older demographics, and mass media integration. Find the full version of the study and more infographics here.

Most probably, the recently launched Vine video-service will help the platform engage even more users over the coming months.