Following various reports over the last few weeks about the state of Twitter’s popularity, today Hubspot has released its third ‘State of the Twittersphere‘ report.

The report is based on the 5 million Twitter accounts and 6 million tweets that Hubspot collects through its Twitter Grader tool and therefore is based on some fairly solid data. It also compares performance to its two previous reports released earlier in 2009.

So what does it tell us?

• Growth has fallen from a high of 13% in March of 2009 to 3.5% in October 2009, the most recent month for which we have data – note this is still growth, just not as fast as at the site’s peak in 2009
• In the last seven months, the average Twitter account holder has become “less of a newbie”. Why is this? The report suggests: “The change may be a reflection of the slowing growth rate. Because of the slowing growth, today’s population of Twitter users has been using the tool longer than the population several months ago.”
  • Today the average Twitter account has 300 followers; in July 2009, it had 70
  • The average account now follows 173 accounts; in July 2009 it was only following 4
  • The average account today has posted 420 updates; in July 2009 that number was 119
• There is better adherence to ‘best practices’
  • 53% of users had their bio completed (compared to 24% in July 2009)
  • 65% had their location (compared to 31%)
  • 41% had their web address added (compared to 20%)
• As with the previous Sysomos research, Twitter’s international reach is increasing; 15% of the top 20 Twitter locations in July 2009 were outside North America, now that figure stands at 40%
• In terms of user characteristics, there were some other really interesting stats:
  • 82% of Twitter users have less than 100 followers
  • 81% of Twitter users are following less than 100 people
  • Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, each accounting for 16% of total tweets
  • 10-11 pm is the most active hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an average day – I’m assuming this is across time zones as it is not referenced specifically in the report