Yet another indication that the microblogging service Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds is the fact that the site has touched a new landmark – that of boasting its 20 billionth message! The new landmark for the 2006-launched service comes only about two months after Twitter’s 15-billionth tweet; and five months since the 10-billionth tweet!

The milestone message, though not a very intelligible one, came at 11:44 a.m. EDT on Saturday. The tweet was sent by a Tokyo-based user “GGGGGGo_Lets_Go”; and, seemingly a part of an ongoing conversation with someone, read thus: “So that means the barrage might come back later all at once.”

Overwhelmed at the revelation that his tweet happened to be the 20-billionth message on Twitter, “GGGGGGo_Lets_Go” wrote shortly after: “It looks like I posted the 20-billionth tweet. I'm getting replies from people all over the world. It's scary. What are the chances? Maybe I'm going to die. Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke.”

Going by the San Francisco-based Twitter’s estimation, almost 8 million tweets are sent by the Japanese per day; marking nearly 12 percent of the worldwide tweets, which is second only to the US.

One of the apparent reasons of Twitter’s exploding popularity in Japan is that, with the site’s 140-character constraint, it is possible to covey a lot more in Japanese than in English.