The advent of Apple's new operating system for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, iOS 5, and, in particular, its Twitter integration, has tripled the amount of sign-ups to the social network. In addition, the site now serves around quarter of a billion tweets every day, a rise of 150 million since the start of 2011.

The statistics were revealed by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo during a speaker dinner at the Web 2.0 summit currently being held in San Francisco. He also stated that around 50 per cent of the site's users are currently active, a rise of 20 per cent since January.

However, he is wary that a rapid rise in popularity raises new challenges: "We’ve got to figure out how to capture the volume at the same time as separating the signal from the noise," he said, referring to the fact that, with 250 million tweets per day, not all of them will be relevant or useful to an onlooker.

Although, naturally, that doesn't mean that he wants things to slow down, quite the opposite: "We think that we can be on 2 billion devices around the world, and reach every person on the planet, and the way to do that is through simplifying," he said, whilst not stroking a white cat or cackling.

What do you think? Is Twitter essential for communication nowadays? Or do you think its popularity will wane? Let us know in the comments below...