Twitter has around 35 million active users in Japan, a figure that would put them ahead of Facebook.
The social media site revealed its user numbers out of the U.S. For the first time on Thursday, and their user base would exceed Facebook’s (FB) 25 million monthly active users in Japan as of the end of 2015, reported the Wall Street Journal.
International markets have become increasingly important for Twitter (TWTR) after the company reported its average monthly active users growth was essentially flat over the most recent quarter. Overseas revenue totaled $247 million, which was a 51% increase year-over-year, and accounted for about 35% of Twitter’s overall revenue stream.
The rise in the user base in Japan is especially encouraging, as it only had less than 7 million users in the country in 2011. “We’ve seen more than a five-fold growth in usage in a really short time,” Shailesh Rao, Twitter’s vice president of Asia-Pacific, Latin America and emerging markets, told the publication .
This corresponds with other studies that say Twitter could be the most used Western social media tool in Japan. A study by eMarketer estimated that half of all social network users in Japan use Twitter, and around one in five people within the entire Japanese population have accessed their Twitter account at least once a month.
Twitter and Facebook, however, will have to cede the title of most popular social media tool to Line. The messaging service has an estimated monthly active user base of around 50 million, and around 40% of the entire Japanese population use the app, according to VentureBeat.
