50% of Tweets Consumed Come From .05% of Users

ajensen201102 writes "A mere 20,000 Twitter users steal almost half of the spotlight on Twitter, which now ropes in a billion tweets every week. That means only 0.05% of the social network's user base attracts attention, according to a new Yahoo Research study. From the article: 'Like findings in previous studies, the researchers for this one conclude Twitter resembles an information-sharing hub rather than a social network, with the top generators garnering huge follower tallies but not following their content consumers in return.'"

Comments

Re:Which is what it's good for.

[Just Some Guy]

I've tried to see the point in Twitter, but apart from making it easier to have group conversations by SMS I really can't work out what it is supposed to achieve.

To illustrate: I went to a convention a couple of weeks ago and started following quite a few interesting people. They didn't have to do anything to push their comments to me, so it that sense it's like they all run their own mailing lists or RSS feeds. Some of their comments led to conversations, and at that point the analogy stops.

The only other people who see those conversations are Twitter users who follow both that person and me. That is, the people who follow me for other reasons aren't dragged into chats I'm having with someone I met at a technical conference. The people who follow the person I'm chatting with don't have to listen to their friend discussing geek stuff with someone they don't know. However, people who follow both of us do get to listen in. This is handy because if they like both of us, chances are good they'll be interested in what we're talking about (and can jump into the conversation at any time).

The exception to the "not having to listen to irrelevant conversation" rule is when someone I'm following "re-tweets" another user, so that I see a message from someone I don't know but which one of my friends thought was worthwhile to pass along. If I like what they've said, with a click or two I can start following that new person.

It has the interactivity of mailing lists without the distractions of listening to a bunch of side chatter. It has the convenience of a centralized repository of millions of RSS feeds you can follow or unfollow with a single click or tap but without the inherent one-directional "broadcasting" feel. Add into that a common interface that's optimized for the task of handling all the incoming messages and managing relationships.

Twitter is - to me - one of those things that looks bad on paper, as though it couldn't possibly work. In practice, I find it a pretty nice and convenient platform for meeting and interacting with new people.