Who is tweeting in London?

This was an independent project at University College London. For six months, researchers captured London's twittersphere, as sent by GPS telephones and tablets, and used a computer programme to identify which languages they were in; that's 3.3 million tweets in a total of 66 languages. 92.5% were in English, but the fascinating detail comes in the analysis of the non-English portion.

The biggest presence was of Spanish language tweets, followed by French, Turkish, Arabic, Portuguese and German. The map created also shows where in London the tweets were sent. The pre-eminence of Spanish tweeting may, in part, be due to the recent influx of young Spaniards seeking work, as well of course as London's resident Latin American population. That French was the next most tweeted language reflects the fact that there are an estimated third of a million French people living in London, but also that they're often younger and more likely to be Twitter users.

Less obvious languages which registered included Basque and...

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What language do you use to tweet? A survey conducted in London shows the large majority of tweets there are in English. The second most widely used language is Spanish. It would interesting to know about Twitter use in other large cities like Tokyo, Mumbai, and Istanbul.