Nobody Actually Twitters
Twitter has been experiencing a flood of publicity over the past few months from main-stream news coverage to celebrity endorsements and beyond. It has been growing at a rapid pace leading to comparisons with Facebook and even Google.
Yet a quick look at Twitter shows that no one is actually Twittering. The website really isn’t as social as one would expect with just 10% of Twitter users sending out over 90% of all tweets on the site.
A recent Harvard Business School study found that the average Twitter user has sent out less than 37 messages, or approximately .37 messages a day. The median Twitter user has one tweet on their account, meaning over half of the site’s users send out tweets once every 74 days.
What does this mean?
Twitter really isn’t as strong of a social network as one would think, but rather more of a one way communication tool where powerful users send out Tweets and tens of thousands of other members follow. Comparisons to social networks such as Facebook may not be so accurate as social networks rely on participation from all members to be effective.
Still, this doesn’t take anything away from Twitter’s potential as a marketing tool. With tens of thousands of users following individual Twitterers, every message that these individuals send out reaches and can influence large numbers of tech-savvy followers. It simply means that Twitter isn’t the two-way street that many made it out to be.
