Almost 80% of all requests made to Twitter for information on its users to be released in the course of criminal investigations or other probes are made by the US government, the micro-blogging website has revealed in its first transparency report.

Following in Google's wake, Twitter has released for the first time data on government requests for user information. The table shows that the US government is significantly more interventionist in terms of the number of times it has asked Twitter to hand over information than any other government in the world.

From 1 January 2012, the US made 679 user information requests out of a total of 849, compared with 98 requests from the Japanese government, 11 each from the Canadian and British governments and under 10 for a slew of other countries.

Not only did the US put in the largest number of requests by far, it was also the most successful at extracting information out of Twitter, with some 75% of its bids eliciting some or all of the information asked for.

Twitter said that it was bringing out its first transparency report to mark Independence Day, having been inspired by Google's example. "One of our goals is to grow Twitter in a way that makes us proud. This ideal informs many of our policies and guides us in making difficult decisions," it said.

The social media firm stressed that it passed on requests for user information to the Twitter account holder in all cases unless prohibited by law.

Twitter's move towards greater transparency came as a Manhattan judge ordered the website to hand over almost three months of tweets from an Occupy Wall Street protester. Judge Matthew Sciarrino, ordering Twitter to turn over the tweets of Malcom Harris under the handle @destructuremal, said that posting in public comes with "consequences".

Twitter's report also shows that it has received more government requests for information on users in the first half of 2012 than in the whole of 2011.

In Google's case, the latest transparency report in June showed a sharp increase in government requests to remove material as well as court orders to do the same.

Twitter's first report also gives details of the number of requests it had received from judges or governments to remove tweets – a much smaller issue with only six requests being made so far this year, none from the US. It also revealed that it had received 3,378 requests so far this year to remove tweets for copyright infringement under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

The website said it had agreed to remove 5,275 tweets for that reason.

Twitter says that from now on it will follow Google's example and produce a transparency report every six months.