Riyadh crowned Arab ‘Twitter Town’ as Saudis post 50m tweets a month

Who would have ever thought that it would be Saudis that are Twitter’s favorite users?

They are posting more than 1 million tweets per day, and Arabic is now becoming the social network’s fastest-growing language.

Riyadh, the Saudi capital is among the top 10 tweeting cities in the world and the first in the Arab region with 50 million monthly tweets from its own Saudi tweeps.

Most tweets are sarcastic and funny, said tweeter Walid Samsoum, adding nearly 70 per cent of tweeters are young people of both genders.

Twitter has pros and cons, but once people know how to use it and what to tweet, it is a good means of communication, said Loubna al-Qaraawi, a tweeter on human development affairs.

In light of this, the Saudi tweeps Forum held five meetings with 21 speakers who discussed their experiences as well as how to create and circulate ideas through their accounts.

The main goal of the forum is to raise awareness, and to explain Twitter’s advantages and disadvantages, said Shayma Hameed al-Din, a member of the Saudi tweeps Committee.

She cited a [study][ http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2013/01/12/259948.html] showing the number of Saudi Twitter accounts has exceeded 2.9 million, and the number of monthly tweets has reached 50 million.

Terms that are trending on Twitter include “al-Hawamir,” which means that a person has more than 20,000 followers, and “al-Moudaraam,” which indicates a curious person who does not care about what others say, said tweeter Thamer al-Mishari.

Many forum attendees agreed that the social networking site has become a quick means to spread rumors.