"- 40 percent of Twitter users have not tweeted since their first day on Twitter, evidence that the account was most likely created and subsequently abandoned.
- Approximately 25 percent of Twitter users are not following anyone, while two-thirds are following fewer than 10 people, evidence that the account was created but is largely dormant.
- More than one-third of Twitter users have not posted a single tweet, and almost 80 percent of users have fewer than 10 tweets, evidence that while Twitter is billed as a great collaboration tool, a large number of users are there to consume content, not distribute it.
- Approximately 30 percent of Twitter users do not have any followers, and 80 percent of Twitter users have fewer than 10 followers, evidence that for many users, their posts are not being widely tracked or read.
- 50 percent of Twitter users are following more people than they have as followers, and another 30 percent of Twitter users are following the same number of people that are following them, evidence that users are aggressively trying to attract followers by hoping they will “follow back” but have been unsuccessful."
Source: Press Releases from
Purewire, 8th June 2009, based on analysis of 7m twitter accounts
This research backs up an earlier report from
Nielsen saying that about 60% of twitter users abandon the service within one month, whether through the twitter site itself, or an external application.
"iPod touch users are significantly younger than iPhone users. 26% of iPhone users are under 24, compared to 69% of iPod touch users. Both devices are over 70% male and have a similar ethnic distribution."
"Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue - Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia's edits ii. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network."
