As a communication channel, Twitter is very much part of the mainstream.

Indeed, it’s hard to go anywhere on the social web – whether to a story on a news website, an individual blog, a company’s news centre – without encountering a method by which you can easily share and amplify online what you find via Twitter and many other tools and channels: just click or tap the little button.

Just how much Twitter is part of the mainstream today is well illustrated in a set of metrics captured by TechCrunch as spoken by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo at an event in the US this week.

Especially if you’re a marketer and Twitter plays a role in your campaigns, you’ll be interested. Get your head around these numbers:

• Since Costolo took over the CEO role [in October 2010], Twitter has grown to 500 million users sending over 350 million tweets per day.
• During the World Cup in summer 2010, Twitter was seeing 3,000 tweets per second, and was sweating the system crashes. Recently, it saw 12,000-15,000+ tweets on Election Day in the U.S.
• When the TV show The X-Factor (U.K.) put a hashtag on the screen, it generated 27,000 tweets in 90 seconds.
• Twitter is working with the Japanese government on a “lifeline project” which includes things like making lists of government agencies on Twitter that people can follow in the wake of a disaster or emergency. The project will be expanded to all of Twitter’s markets, with the U.K. and Spain indicating interest already.
• The service will “never change” its 140-character limit.

There’s more, including news of plans to enable users to download every single tweet they’ve sent – see the full story at TechCrunch.

(Tweet button image via SpiceUpYourBlog)

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• Should you trust Twitter?
• Twitter can’t be gagged, even in France
• Make of Twitter what you will