Today, we’re increasing Twitter’s reach by launching in five new languages. Twitter is now available in Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Hindi, Filipino and Malay. Last week’s announcement of 100 million active users worldwide shows Twitter’s current reach; with these new languages Twitter will now be more easily accessible to almost half a billion people around the world.

Twitter now fully supports 17 languages. Our crowd-sourced translation process relies on a dedicated community of volunteer translators to both translate and moderate twitter.com, support pages, Twitter apps and more. Many thanks to our 290,000 (and counting) volunteer translators.

We will continue to add more languages to the Translation Center for crowdsourced translation. Coming soon to the Translation Center: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Polish and Hungarian.

Five years ago, Twitter came to life when @jack sent the first Tweet to his seven followers. Now, 100 million active users around the globe turn to Twitter to share their thoughts and find out what’s happening in the world right now.

More than half of them log in to Twitter each day to follow their interests. For many, getting the most out of Twitter isn’t only about tweeting: 40 percent of our active users simply sign in to listen to what’s happening in their world.

Twitter’s global reach gives a voice to people around the world and as far away as the International Space Station. After launching Hindi, Filipino, Malay and Simplified and Traditional Chinese in the coming weeks, Twitter will support 17 different languages.

Our 100 million active users range from passionate early adopters to recent converts. They include:

Leaders. Thirty-five global heads of state use Twitter as a primary way to communicate with their constituencies, from @JuliaGillard in Australia to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, @CFKArgentina. In the United States, frequent Tweeters include every Cabinet agency, 84 percent of state governors, and every major candidate for President. City leaders, like Mayors @CoryBooker of Newark and @MayorOfLondon among many more, share local news. More than 40 percent of the top global religious leaders are on Twitter, including @DalaiLama and the Pope, who sent his first Tweet from @news_va_en in June.

Athletes. Many US professional sports players are active on Twitter, including two-thirds of the NBA. Every team in the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS tweets, as do cricket players in India, European football stars and many other celebrated athletes around the world. Fans and commentators join in for some of the most colorful conversations on Twitter.

Humanitarians. Additionally, over 99 percent of America's top 200 non-profits are on Twitter. Recently, in response to Hurricane Irene, @Fema created a special list of accounts to follow for the most up-to-date and official information, while @redcross signed up lists of official volunteers to assist in four-hour shifts to disseminate the latest information to those affected by the storm.

Entertainers. Eighty-seven percent of Billboard’s Top 100 musicians of 2010 are active on Twitter, connecting with fans to engage their audiences. Each of the top 50 Nielsen-rated TV shows are represented on Twitter. And who doesn’t love a daily dose of hilarity from their favorite comedian? Both new talent like @MindyKaling and @AzizAnsari and seasoned pros like @SteveMartinToGo and @ConanOBrien keep us laughing.

Reporters. Major newsrooms from @AJEnglish to @WashingtonPost actively use Twitter to supplement their reporting efforts. Reporters share stories and photos from the front lines, like New York Times reporter Brian Stelter’s on-the-ground coverage of the devastating tornado that hit Joplin, MO in May. Ordinary citizens break news and give us a view we might otherwise miss, like the now-famous Space Shuttle image that was retweeted over 2,300 times, and the first photo of the US Airways plane that landed in the Hudson River in 2009.

Thanks to all of you, we have 100 million reasons to celebrate.

Tomorrow night, the New Orleans Saints (@TheSaints) and Green Bay Packers (@packers) kick off the 2011 NFL season. And with every NFL team and nearly half of all the players tweeting, you can get closer than ever to all the action.

Whether you’re a casual fan or a gridiron die-hard, Twitter gives you a richer, 360-degree view of the game. Here are a few tips to make sure you don’t miss any of the action or behind the scenes insight:

• Follow the NFL for the latest information about games, schedules and news.
• Stay ahead of your friends and improve your fantasy football team’s chances. Check out ESPN Fantasy Sports, Yahoo! Sports and CBS Fantasy News for the latest insider updates to manage your roster.
• Turn on SMS notifications for your favorite football accounts, and make sure you never miss a touchdown. You can learn about it here.
• And, of course, you can search for teams and individual players to find related Tweets and accounts.

We’ve also made it easy to discover new football-related information with Twitter accounts for each team in the NFL. These accounts automatically select and retweet the top Tweets from official team accounts, coaches, players, owners and local media — bringing you the latest Tweets from your favorite team.

NFC
East: The Washington Redskins [@RedskinsTweets], the Philadelphia Eagles [@EaglesTweets], the New York Giants [@GiantsTweets], the Dallas Cowboys [@CowboysTweets]

North: The Green Bay Packers [@PackerTweets], the Minnesota Vikings [@VikingsTweets], the Chicago Bears [@CHIBearsTweets], the Detroit Lions [@LionsTweets]

South: The Atlanta Falcons [@FalconsTweets], the Carolina Panthers [@PanthersTweets], the New Orleans Saints [@SaintsTweets], the Tampa Bay Buccaneers [@BuccaneerTweets]

West: The San Francisco 49ers [@sf49erstweets], the Arizona Cardinals [@CardinalsTweets], the Seattle Seahawks [@SeahawksTweets], the St. Louis Rams [@STLRamsTweets]

AFC
East: The Buffalo Bills [@BUFBillsTweets], the Miami Dolphins [@Dolphins_Tweets], the New England Patriots [@NEPatriotTweets], the New York Jets [@NYJetsTweets]

North: The Baltimore Ravens [@RavensTweets], the Cincinnati Bengals [@BengalsTweets], the Cleveland Browns [@BrownsTweets], the Pittsburgh Steelers [@Steeler_Tweets]

South: The Houston Texans [@TexansTweets], the Indianapolis Colts [@ColtsTweets], the Jacksonville Jaguars [@JaguarsTweets], the Tennessee Titans [@TitansTweets]

West: The Denver Broncos [@BroncosTweets], the Kansas City Chiefs [@ChiefsTweets], the Oakland Raiders [@RaiderTweets], the San Diego Chargers [@ChargersTweets]

Fashion industry insiders dress up Twitter this month with photos, videos and commentary from Fashion Week, starting with New York (Sept. 8-15) and followed by London (Sept. 16-21). Top designers, models and stylists will tweet from the hottest shows, share views from backstage and reveal new looks minutes before they hit the runway. Here are the people to follow for a front row seat:

@NYFW
Follow @NYFW to see shows through the eyes of a special guest Tweeter every day of New York Fashion Week:

People send more than 200 Tweets per minute about the weather. When conditions turn severe, weather-related Tweets double, as people share powerful personal stories along with reports of hurricanes, heat waves and blizzards.

Starting today, The Weather Channel and Twitter have teamed up to bring you real-time Tweets about the weather on The Weather Channel itself, weather.com, their mobile apps. The Weather Channel has created Twitter accounts for more than 200 U.S. cities that will tweet regular local forecast updates. Now, you can follow your local weather account to stay in the know.

These accounts join a wide variety of other Twitter accounts that provide news, color and commentary around weather events, from the mild to the extreme:

• @ReedTimmerTVN is a tornado chaser from Discovery Network’s Storm Chasers program, tweeting his storm-chasing successes and failures.
• @AlRoker, the weather and feature anchor on NBC News’ TODAY show, tweets humorous weather news and anecdotes from across the US.
• @USATodayWeather USA Today was the first national newspaper to publish a weather map; now, it tweets relevant forecast information all day long.
• @I80Chains, an account for Northern California’s Interstate 80, reports when snow chains are necessary to travel over mountain passes due to inclement weather.
• @KarlTheFog tweets humorous updates to San Franciscans based on current fog status.
• @capitalweather lets folks near Washington DC keep up with weather-related news
• @JackatNWS, the National Weather Service administrator, tweets about major national US weather events.
• @usnoaagov tweets interesting facts and stories from the U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which monitors the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere.
• @wunderground tweets and retweets major local weather events from around the world
• #wxreport: people in the U.S. can include this hashtag in their Tweets to report local weather conditions to the National Weather Service.

Today, we’re rolling out two new features on Twitter.com that help you discover more on Twitter. You can now see when someone favorites or retweets one of your Tweets. You can also learn which Tweets are most interesting and inspiring to the people you follow.

The first new feature offers a simple way to see what's happening on Twitter in relation to you. Just click on the new tab with your @username, and you’ll be able to see which of your Tweets are Favorites, plus the latest Retweets (of your Tweets), Tweets directed to you, and your new Followers.

The other new feature is the Activity tab. It provides a rich new source of discovery by highlighting the latest Favorites, Retweets, and Follows from the people you follow on Twitter – all in one place. It’s easier than ever to explore Twitter, connect with people, and discover what’s happening around the world.

Twitter continues to grow around the globe at a record pace. Just a year ago, we delivered 65 million Tweets a day. Today, we generate over 200 million Tweets per day. One year ago, there were approximately 150,000 registered Twitter apps. Now, there are more than one million that connect to Twitter. And our team has grown from 250 people to more than 600 in the past 12 months.

More importantly, Twitter is where people around the globe come to instantly connect to what’s most meaningful to them. This makes Twitter the only place in the world to get a real-time pulse on what people are thinking and doing practically anywhere.

We’ve come very far in a short time. Now we have an opportunity to expand Twitter’s reach with a significant round of funding led by the venture firm DST Global, with the participation of several of our existing investors. We will use these resources to aggressively innovate, hire more great people and invest in international expansion.

Thank you for everything you’ve done to help get us here and for inspiring us to work even harder. We can’t wait for you to see what we have planned to make Twitter even better.

Twitter celebrated its first non-English launch in April 2008 with the release of Twitter in Japanese. In November 2009, Twitter launched it’s second and third languages: Spanish and French. And, with today’s launch of Dutch and Indonesian, Twitter has been fully translated into eleven languages.

Dutch and Indonesian were the first languages to be fully translated by community volunteers using our Translation Center that opened earlier in the year. Volunteers translate twitter.com, support pages, desktop and mobile applications — everything except the Tweets. Then, a select group of the most active translators work closely with the team at Twitter to maintain localized versions of the service.

Thanks to the active and growing Twitter community (200,000 translators and counting), the launch of today’s two languages is our fastest to date. From the first calls for community involvement to today’s launch, the localization process for Dutch and Indonesian took just one month. We will be using this new process to translate Twitter into many more languages soon. Next up: Filipino and Malay. If you speak one of these (or other) languages, visit our Translation Center to contribute to Twitter’s localization efforts.

We all come to Twitter to connect with the latest information on the topics and people we care about. So when we decide to follow a favorite brand, business or charitable organization, we expect to be among the first to get a special announcement, access to exclusive content or a great offer.

That's why starting today, we're introducing a way to ensure that the most important Tweets from the organizations you follow reach you directly, by placing them at or near the top of your timeline. These Promoted Tweets will scroll through the timeline like any other Tweet, and like regular Tweets, they will appear in your timeline just once. Promoted Tweets can also be easily dismissed from your timeline with a single click.

We’ll be rolling out and testing this new offering over the next several weeks with a select group of partners, including Best Western, Dell, Gatorade, Groupon, HBO, JetBlue, LivingSocial, Microsoft Xbox, Red Bull, Sephora, Starbucks, Summit Entertainment’s “50/50”, TNT and Virgin America among others — with more to come soon. During this phase, you may also see Promoted Tweets in your timeline from non-profit organizations you follow, including charity: water, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Room to Read, The American Red Cross and Water.org.

From the start, our philosophy around advertising has been simple: We put our users first and strive to create products that enrich the Twitter experience for every Twitter user. We’re excited about this next step and look forward to your feedback.