Twitter turns 12, cites PH as one of fastest growing markets globally

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MANILA — Social networking platform Twitter marked its 12th year on Wednesday, and cited the Philippines as one of its fastest-growing audience markets in the world.

“We consider the Asia Pacific (APAC) region as Twitter’s growth engine, and the Philippines is one of our fastest-growing audience markets in the world,” Arvinder Gujral, Twitter managing director for Southeast Asia and senior director for business development in APAC, China, and Australia, told the Philippine News Agency (PNA).

Gujral said Twitter has played an integral part in the lives of many people, especially the Filipinos, by helping them share moments in entertainment and sports, and also to connect with other fans and their favorite celebrities or athletes.

“It is always about ‘What’s Happening’. This 12th birthday, we continue to amplify our users’ experience to make conversations more fun, engaging, and more importantly, safer,” he remarked.

He added Twitter has been the first platform for Filipinos to know what the latest happenings are.

Gujral said Twitter conversations are mostly driven by younger demographics, or the millennials, who use social media to interact with their friends and idols.

Gujral told PNA he had noticed that Filipino Twitter users normally center the conversations on three things: entertainment, sports, and for civic needs.

“Philippines is the only country who garnered most Tweets for a concert like that of Lady Gaga, for local love teams like KathNiel and Aldub. (Huge number of tweets/conversations) was also generated during pageants like the Miss Universe 2016,” he said.

For sports, he cited that Filipinos use Twitter to cheer, for instance, for their University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) and Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) teams.

Gujral also noted that the Philippine government uses Twitter to reach out to Filipinos, to give them updates and announcements about national calamities, typhoons, earthquakes.

Meanwhile, Gujral said Twitter is now focused on boosting its core strength as fastest place to see what’s happening in the world and what the people are talking about.

It is also working on making Twitter a safer digital platform.

He added that the company would continue to invest in partnering with telecommunications companies and news organizations.