Twitter hits 25 billion tweets

Twitter says that more than 25 billion tweets were sent in the past year, as global events such as the World Cup boosted traffic on the micro-blogging site.

It claims that more that 95 million tweets are now sent every day.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill was the top-trending topic on Twitter over the past 12 months.

The FIFA World Cup in South Africa came in second, followed by the film Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page.

The Apple iPad, Haiti earthquake and teen pop star Justin Beiber also feature in the Top 10.

As well as the overall top trends, Twitter has identified the leading trends in eight categories: news events, people, movies, television, technology, world cup, sports and hashtags The full list of Twitter Trends 2010 can be found here.

Twitter says: “The list of 2010 Twitter Trends reflects what’s happening in our world, demonstrates the power of turning any event or story into a shared experience, and underscores Twitter’s value as a real-time information network.”