Twitter now has over 200 million active monthly users. (Twitter)

Twitter has claimed that the number of monthly active users of the service has now reached 200 million. 

In a December 18 tweet from Twitter's official account (@twitter) the company wrote "There are now more than 200M monthly active @twitter users. You are the pulse of the planet. We're grateful for your ongoing support!"

This places the number of active monthly users on Twitter above Google+, which announced estimates of 135 million active monthly users on December 6, and an increase from the 140 million active monthly users Twitter estimated itself back in March of this year. 

Of Twitter's now 200 million active monthly users, the most followed is pop star Lady Gaga, with the "Queen of Twitter" racking up over 32 million followers; teenage heartthrob and singer Justin Bieber is not far behind with over 31 million followers. 

Despite this undeniably impressive growth, Twitter still has a long way to go before catching up with social networking giant Facebook, which estimated itself to have a whopping 1.01 billion monthly active users back in October.