Malaysians are slowly warming up to micro-blogging site Twitter, but not as fast as its Asia-Pacific counterparts, a recent survey shows. 

The survey by US-based marketing research giant comScore Inc said that 7.7 percent of Malaysian netizens are using Twitter, which allows users to broadcast 160-character short messages online and engage in social networking.

This suggests that Malaysia has 1.3 million Twitter users, based on the United Nation's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that Malaysia's Internet penetration stands at 17 million or 64 percent of the total population.

comScore ranks Malaysia at No 19 among Asia-Pacific countries, behind Singapore (13.3 percent, rank No 9), the Philippines (14.8 percent, No 6), Japan (16.8 percent, No 5) and Indonesia (20.8 percent, No 1).

"The comScore survey revealed that Asia-Pacific ranked as the second-fastest growing region, climbing 243 percent to 25.1 million Twitter users," reports tech website ZDnet Asia, which adds that Latin America saw the strongest audience growth.

The survey polled Internet users aged 15 and above from 41 countries who accessed Twitter.com from work or home, but excluding smartphone and public computer users.

However, the survey notes that Twitter usage through smartphones was on the rise.

According to Internet behaviour analyst Alexa.com, Twitter currently ranks No 13 among websites visited by Malaysians, far behind its nearest competitor Facebook, which sits at the top.

Notable Malaysian Twitter users include a number of companies such as budget carrier AirAsia for marketing purposes, while a large number of opposition politicians have been taking up the platform to overcome limited coverage from government-owned media organisations.