Twitter more widely adopted in Canada than the US?

UPDATE: Always be sure to read the comments, kids! Incredible claims ‘n’ all that

New data from comScore—and I mean hand delivered from comScore (thanks, guys!)—pegs Twitter use at 13.5% in Canada, above the US at 11.9%.

That’s 4,554,886 Canadians and 36,533,779 Americans, to put the percentage into perspective [Ed: see comments]. Twitter has greater penetration in Canada, but far more users in the US.

My jaw is on the floor for several reasons. One of them is the disparity between Canadian adoption & the apparent Winnipeg userbase, which clocks in at just over 1% (double checked here and here).

Another is comScore’s suggested worldwide penetration: 7.4% of humanity, or 510,406,873. That’s the same user base as Facebook, which you’d think would be making news over at Twitter. Their spokesperson says they have 200 million registered accounts, so either I don’t understand how to do percentages or something’s bizarre in the data. Someone please correct me if I’m misunderstanding what “worldwide penetration percentage” is.

ComScore doesn’t count mobile tweets, which Twitter says make up 40% of all tweets. In developing countries phones may be the only way Twitter is accessed, so there’s a portion of the userbase missing from the 7.4%. They also don’t monitor desktop apps like Seesmic, Tweetdeck & Hootsuite.

In the markets where comScore does analyze mobile tweets, they’re only able to report on Twitter.com itself used via mobile browser, and not the apps that are the most likely source of access.

Can Twitter really have such broad penetration? They did grow by some 20% in the past four months alone (160m users in September 2010—200m users in December 2010), so it’s possible—and exciting.

Twitter’s importance as a worldwide communication medium was solidified this week as Google announced a partnership with Twitter to develop Speak2Tweet—a means of phoning in tweets without the internet—in aid of Egyptians whose government silenced online communication. The tweet was singled out as the most critical delivery method for global voices.