Kuwait has the most Twitter users per capita, according to a recent paper by analysts from Northeastern University. The Netherlands ranks #2, while the UK and US fall behind in 4th and 5th place, respectively.
The researchers also found a clear correlation between GDP per capita and Twitter adoption.
It should be noted that Twitter use is affected by government restriction in some countries: a Twitter user in Kuwait was sentenced to five years in prison after making ‘religiously offensive’ comments on Twitter last fall, and Twitter is not even legal in China (Slate).
The researchers examined 380 million tweets between October 2010 and May 2012; the tweets came from more than 6 million users in 191 countries. Only tweets sent by smartphones that included GPS location data were used for the study.
While the data is a bit old (the most recent tweets analyzed were from May 2012), the study looks at Twitter in several new (and interesting) ways. Click here to read the full paper.
