Handful of Twitterers account for almost all tweets

by Dan leahul, Brand Republic 03-Jun-09, 11:15

LONDON - Just 10% of Twitter users account for 90% of tweets, three times more than other social networks where the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production, according to new research.

Read Gordon's Republic blog post - Twitter getting into the groove

A report from Harvard Business found that use of Twitter is highly concentrated among its most prolific users, implying that the website "resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network".

The results are more lopsided than Wikipedia, where 15% of members account for 90% of all page edits, and treble that of other social networks, such as Facebook.

The study also found that a typical user tweets only once in their Twitter lifetime, supporting earlier evidence from another study which found that half of all users abandon their accounts after one month.

The study also found that men are more likely to reciprocate their followers friendship compared to women and tend to have 15% more followers.

Men are also twice as likely to follow another man.

The study said: "Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women.

"We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling [because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.]."

Twitter's most popular user happens to be male, Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher, who recently passed the 2m follower mark.

US talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is Twitter's most popular female with 1.7m followers.

Harvard Business looked at a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users during May of this year.

Read Gordon's Republic blog post - Twitter getting into the groove