44% of Twitter Users Have Never Tweeted

First time accepted submitter RileyWalz (3614865) writes "Twopcharts (a third party website that records and monitors activity on Twitter) is reporting that about 44 percent of all 947 million accounts on Twitter have never posted a single tweet. Of the 550 million users who have tweeted before, 43 percent posted their last tweet over a year ago. And only about 13.3 percent have tweeted in the last 30 days. This could be a sign of many users just signing up and forgetting about their account, or they just prefer reading other's posts. Twitter is not commenting on this data, saying that they do not talk about third-party information related to its service."

Comments

Probably typical

[Chrisq]

Most will have signed up, thought it crap, and never returned. Most people don't delete dead accounts and counting them as "users" is as false as counting someone as driving a Toyota if they once took a test drive.

Re:Probably typical

[buchner.johannes]

No, what it means is that the majority of accounts are bots, created to increase follower-numbers.

Re:Probably typical

[Johann Lau]

No, it means both.

Re:Probably typical

[penix1]

And a third group people are totally forgetting.... Parents and students where the schools has said it will use Twitter to tell them of emergencies. They get the account solely to receive these notices.

Re:Probably typical

[shri]

Most people are consumers of tweets. They follow people, click through their links / updates etc. If you look at forums and other community media, you'll see that getting >10% of users to contribute is actually VERY good.

Re:Probably typical

[ildon]

There's a third type of person who never tweets. One that essentially uses Twitter as an RSS feed, news aggregator, and/or joke-a-day (or joke-a-five-minutes) feed. They could still be considered "active" users, in that they use the service, but don't feel the need to post.

Re:Probably typical

[Anonymous Coward]

These systems are not meant for personal emergencies. They are meant for situations that have to go out to the whole school population at once. Like weather closing/delays, or that a there is bear prowling the playground, recess is canceled (yes, I really did get a message like this once).

Re:Probably typical

[hodet]

You don't need to tweet for twitter to be useful. Many people follow others or use it to keep on top of things. For example, if there is a minor earthquake somewhere there is no better place to really find out what happened quickly than twitter. "Holy crap, #EARTHQUAKE, shook the building for 30 seconds"

Re:Probably typical

[mlts]

You can count me in that category. I signed up way back in 2008 because after getting out of college, prospective employers would demand if I had a FB/MySpace/Twitter account, and if not, the interview was up, as the HR rep felt that it was mandatory for anyone in IT to have social networking accounts to be considered up to date in skills.

So, I created a Twitter account, followed EMC and a few other names, and called it done... it did make the bean counters happy because they thought I was "with it".

Re:Probably typical

[Marxist Hacker 42]

1939-1945

Too easy

[kruach aum]

I wish the other 56% didn't either.

Finding correlation where there is none

[Roxoff]

Somehow the report of '44% of twitter accounts have never been used' has been morphed by the reporter into '44% of twitter users have never posted'.

I know people with multiple Twitter accounts, separation between business and pleasure accounts... some just to follow others without sticking their nose above the parapet (and are never tweeted from), some for larks, some for business.

44% of Twitter accounts != 44% of Twitter users.

The original poster has read some report on the internet and inferred meaning where none could possibly exist. Shoddy, shoddy journalism.

In other news...

[Joce640k]

In other news: 44% of Slashdot readers have never posted a single comment.

Re:In other news...

[Monsieur_F]

In other news: 82% of Slashdot readers have never read a single article.

Re:In other news...

[grep -v '.*' *]

In other news: 82% of Slashdot readers have never read a single article.

And if you're using slashdot beta, that number drops to a low 101% of the comments.

Why that extra 1%? Why that's because the print function is also in beta and it loses comments before th

Re:In other news...

[marcello_dl]

In other news, 100% of facebook users have never booked a face.

And 99% never posted anything interesting

[Katatsumuri]

This is okay. Twitter is labelled as a "microblogging" platform, but many people use it as a multicast IM, or just a newsfeed app. Not to mention the bots.

This is nothing when compared...

[ctrl-alt-canc]

...to the fact that about 85% of world population does not use Twitter!

It's a good service

[jones_supa]

Many people think that Twitter is some hipster bullshit, and I was somewhat in the same boat before. But when I slapped a Twitter client to the side of my desktop and subscribed to a bunch of cool tech guys and some news agencies, I really started to enjoy the stuff. The perfect way to stay updated to world events in easily digestible small capsules. Also much better platform to discuss nerdy stuff than Facebook.

Now only waiting for the angry AC to call me a Twitter shill.

Here's why I did so.

[Simulant]

I signed up and never posted simply to use twitter credentials on other web sites.

No kidding

[ilsaloving]

And when I see (usually in the news) posts from other twitters, it makes me wish the other 46% would do the same.

There is very little you can constructively say in just 140 characters. Twitter is great for only very specific scenarios such as status reports, quick facts, quick questions or witty one-liners.

Everything else is just inanity from people who think the more exclamation marks you use at the end of a sentence, the more seriously you should take their statement.

The sole reason I set up an account was so I could follow a couple of local restaurants because they post useful things like their daily specials. And that ST:TNG S8 guy. Too bad he stopped writing new plot synopses.

What Twitter IS Good For

[CMYKjunkie]

Since I am the nerd of the family (I'm sure many of you can appreciate that), family always asks me: should I get on Twitter? My answer is "probably not" because it is really terrible as a person-to-person communication platform. 140 char limit will do that to you.

I use Twitter and it does have some uses, and I tell the family and friends that it's useful for...

* Breaking news (it's like a wire-service for the masses);

* Closely following a product/celebrity/athlete/event/sport;

* Posting a short question on a specific topic via #;

* Posting or finding witticisms and satire;

* Posting or finding a status report (not viable to foster a discussion by any means); and

* Finding spam, click-bait, impersonators of real people, bots, pr0n, and completely inaccurate information.

I mainly use Twitter myself to follow athletes in the NFL (primarily my team, Green Bay) and the three forms of motorsport I watch: NASCAR, Formula 1, and IndyCar. I really like Twitter during one of these sporting events because posters can give you more detail/insight into the event or people involved than just the TV or radio broadcasters (Example: sideline/pit reporters or members of a team participating in the event who can tweet during the event.)

IMHO though, the spam/bots/clickbait is out of control and detracts from the platform.

Re:What's the point?

[taiwanjohn]

Can someone explain to me in a sentence or two how and why Twitter is useful? I've had an account for many years, but every time I log in to check, it just looks like a mess. And yet there are millions of people who (apparently) think it's awesome, so I must be doing something wrong.

I would love to hear some examples of how others have found Twitter useful.