The Worldwide Congress on Information Technology takes place this week in Amsterdam, Netherlands. As part of my participation, I was asked to deliver a keynote speech on Inclusion. The following research is not comprehensive, but is meant to explore  a new metric for technological and cultural progress.

I took a sample 24 hours of public Twitter traffic on May 16, 2009 (a Saturday) and May 16, 2010 (a Sunday). Twitter data is from Peoplebrowsr, population data from Wolfram Alpha. The resulting Tweets per Capita is an interesting economic indicator.

BEST 2010 Tweets per Capita

1. Singapore
2. Netherlands
3. Australia
4. New Zealand
5. USA
6. Canada
7. Ireland
8. Puerto Rico
9. Brazil
10. UK

WORST 2010 Tweets per Capita

1. TIE: Democratic Republic of the Congo & Ethiopia
2. Kosovo
3. Sudan
4. Bangladesh
5. Uzbekistan
6. Somalia
7. Nepal
8. Pakistan
9. Nigeria
10. BVI
11. Haiti

BEST Tweet Growth

1. Uzbekistan
2. Indonesia
3. Venezuela
4. Turkey
5. Thailand
6. Japan
7. Nigeria
8. Brazil
9. Egypt
10. Saudi Arabia

WORST Tweet Growth

1. Iran (decline)
2. Ethiopia (decline)
3. British Virgin
4. US Virgin
5. USA
6. Canada
7. Portugal
8. Israel
9. Australia
10. Aruba

BEST 2010 Tweet Output

1. USA
2. Brazil
3. Indonesia
4. Japan
5. UK
6. Canada
7. Australia
8. Netherlands
9. India
10. Germany

WORST 2010 Tweet Output

1. British Virgin
2. Gibraltar
3. Kosovo
4. Democratic Republic of the Congo
5. US Virgin
6. Ethiopia
7. Somalia
8. Uzbekistan
9. Sudan
10. NL Antilles

There were a few surprises here worth further study, some of which I examine in my presentation above: Iran, Haiti, Chile, Venezuela, and the Netherlands.

If anyone is interested in combing through the raw data, please contact me. We also seek sponsors to continue this research and develop a regular report on the topic.