As rioting has continued to spread across London, with the capital seeing a third night of violence that has now started to bleed into other major cities, the British population have been turning to social networking sites for news and updates, with Twitter in particular seeing an enormous uptake in traffic.

Indeed, UK visits to Twitter yesterday were so frequent that a new all-time record has been set.

As reported by Experian Hitwise, Twitter accounted for one out of every 170 UK internet visits on August 8 – approximately 3.4 million visits to Twitter.com – which beat the previous record that was set during the super-injunction scandal.

Hitwise note that this same traffic bump wasn’t seen in Facebook or other social media sites, largely because many of the most prolific Twitter users are located in or around the London area. Internet users in the South East of London are 26% more likely to visit Twitter than any other member of the UK population.

Facebook, meanwhile, skews towards users in the North of the country. The popularity of Twitter amongst Londoners during these riots is why the network is proving itself to be the go-to platform for updates about the unrest, for citizens and authorities alike.

(Source: Experian Hitwise.)