Are you one of those people who have a Twitter account, but doesn’t use it? If so, you’re not alone. Fresh statistics from the prestigious Harvard Business Review reveals that most Twitter account holders hardly every Tweet, retweet, follow, or are followed. In fact, in the random sampling of more than 300,000 Twitter users, the survey discovered that only 10 percent of Twitter users are generating nearly 90 percent of all those Tweets going out every day. That slim 10 percent can include anyone from an over-active advertiser, to a bored celeb who tweets all the time.
The vast 90% of Twitter account holders have probably lost their passwords, lost interest, or just don’t have time. A whopping 50% of Twitter users only Tweet once in every two and a half months. In addition, the majority of these lethargic Twitter users have Tweeted just once in their lifetime!
In addressing the gender breakdown, the study reports that men have more Twitter relationships than women—which goes contrary to typical social findings that define women as more relational. However, the study in no way suggests that men are more relational, only that men have 15% more Twitter followers and have followed more people than women.
These statistics could be alarming for Twitter. Most social networking sites report that the top 10% of users are producing 30% of the activity. With Twitter, this typical statistics is turned on its head. What this means for Twitter is that all the rage might not be that outrageous. With a slide in popularity and a scary user-not-using stat, Twitter may have to do something new to stay popular.
