14 DAY TRIAL // In a field as new and as fast moving as social networking it’s hard to have actual real data and not just speculation and hype. Twitter may be growing exponentially and it looks like everyone is getting on the wagon these days but according to new research conducted by the Harvard Business Review most users don't really use the service, with just 10 percent of them posting 90 percent of all tweets.
The study took place in May 2009 and used about 300,000 random Twitter users for data. The findings were somewhat surprising as it turns out that 25 percent of Twitter users don't tweet at all, with 50 percent tweeting less than once every 74 days. However, 10 percent are the most prolific, accounting for 90 percent of the tweets.
This is very different from other social networks, where the top 10 percent make only 30 percent of the content. The researchers point instead to Wikipedia as comparison, noting that 15 percent of editors account for 90 percent of the edits. This would seem to indicate what was already somewhat apparent, that Twitter is more about broadcasting a message than it is about chatting with your friends.
Another interesting fact was the gender distribution and the way they interacted. According to the study men make up for 45 percent of Twitter's users while women account for 55 percent. But unlike other social networks men have 15 percent more followers than women and also tend to follow another man rather than a woman. In fact, 65 percent of the users a man follows are other men while only 35 percent are women.
This is in stark contrast with most social networks where women follow other women they already know while men follow women they either know or don't. The difference can't be accounted for by men creating more content on Twitter as both genders tweet at the same rate.