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Announcing the June 2009 State of the Twittersphere Report

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In recent months the popular story about Twitter has been that the service's user base is growing at an incredible rate. With celebrities joining Twitter (including the all important Oprah) and CNN and Ashton Kutcher's race to a million followers, it seems like microblogging is unstoppable, and it very well may be. Now, though, we're starting to see that the free-form nature of the service may be hindering actual usage by all those new users.

We're happy to announce that we're releasing version two of our State of the Twittersphere report (you can check out last year's version here). In it we've found some surprising things. Namely, that many of the accounts on Twitter aren't actually using it all that much.

  • 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
  • 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
  • 68.68% have not specified a location
  • 55.50% are not following anyone
  • 54.88% have never tweeted
  • 52.71% have no followers


We also found that since Twitter has implemented a limit to the number of users an account can follow (a maximum of 2000 when the user has less than 2000 followers) there is a large number of users who are following exactly 2000 users, possibly indicating that many active users are intentionally trying to gain as many followers as possible to increase their reach.


Download the State of the Twittersphere Report to read the full report and if you want to discuss it on Twitter please use the hashtag: #SOTwitter so that we can follow along with the discussion and answer any questions that may come up.

There's also a discusion about the report taking place in the InboundMarketing.com forum.

Discussion on this topic:

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Posted by Dan Zarrella on Wed, Jun 10, 2009 @ 07:07 AM

COMMENTS

Great work HubSpot! It is so interesting that many users are not maximizing the Twitter opportunity. Very puzzling.

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 7:28 AM by Kenneth Darryl Brown


Great stuff Dan. These stats are very interesting (50% have no followers) - and it's the user experience of Twitter than made those stats come true. The average Joe doesn't know about desktop apps, and may even think adobe air (needed for tweetdeck) is a virus. 
 
I bet if twitter added Silverlight or Adobe Flex to their web application those percentages would decrease.

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 7:42 AM by Matthew Ray


This is very interesting - I would really like to see some more information about "who" is using twitter. Who's on just for fun and connecting with friends, who has a marketing aim? And of course we can't forget #twitterspam ! 
 

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 7:59 AM by Freedom Dumlao


Great report! 
 
I suggest adding an element to your inactive account criteria. Those that haven't updated for say, 30 days or more, will have abandoned their accounts. Your current criteria eliminates people who may have just signed up as inactive. 
 
Thanks for doing all the heavy lifting on the research :)

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 8:29 AM by Adele McAlear


Great post. Fascinating to watch the twitterverse evolve isn't it? So many trying to market their business or services in the midst of all the tweets. Wonder what it'll look like a year from as rapid surge of spam has done it's damage.

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 8:34 AM by David Coakley


It is very interesting to see how many of the big Internet fads end up with a "critical mass" of users (is it 10% of Tweeters make up 90% of Tweets?) 
 
 
 
Ultimately, the Twitterverse, and Facebook, and others like it, fail because casual users get bored. There will always be a danger of "walled gardens", such as the discussion forums with only a dozen regular users or blogs without much footfall.  
 
 
 
Twitter can only survive if far more ordinary people find it useful. I am not sure how long it has to survive if the 10% of users ratio changes any further....

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 8:44 AM by Liam


the trouble with twitter is it is DULL.  
 

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 9:06 AM by John Smart


Perhaps the bubble has already burst. Google Insights Into Search shows twitter searches have stalled. Searches peaked in April. http://bitly.com/14cMRJ

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 9:11 AM by skarld


Very interesting stats... I seem to hear about Twitter everywhere this week. Thanks for sharing this, it's good to know what's going on.

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 9:21 AM by Julien


Interesting data, but I'm puzzled. 
Can someone explain how, if: 
55.50% are not following anyone 
54.88% have never tweeted 
52.71% have no followers 
Only 9.06% have 'fewer than 10 followers, fewer than 10 friends, and fewer than 10 updates'? 
Surely it would be closer to 40%, as there must be a lot of overlap between the three groups above. 
Dan

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 10:47 AM by DanDall


If 55.50% are not following anyone  
54.88% have never tweeted  
52.71% have no followers  
 
What's the intersection of those sets? I'd love to see a Venn Diagram or some more indepth analysis. Are the 55% who haven't tweeted the same as those who have not followed others? 
I know several folks who tweet very rarely but use their own account page to see what @oprah and others are up to. Not the "intended" use of Twitter but it works for them.

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 4:40 PM by Howard Greenstein


As I said here http://bit.ly/3XIlo I think that when writing something this interlaced with class, race, and gender issues (especially), you would want to avoid language that is fraught with sexism and racism. Furthermore, ignoring the implications of the inequity of access to technology, internet, and social media tools in a study of the demographics of something as socially prominent as Twitter is shortsighted to put it politely.  
 
Once I got past this, it was an interesting report. But I am still left with a bad taste in my mouth from the above.

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 10:16 PM by kkrahel


Looking forward to reading your full report.  
 
It's interesting to me that even though your percentages for people not really using Twitter are so high I still find Twitter to be a an amazing place to work and play.  
 
I find opportunities and meet interesting people every day. Imagine how things would really open up if even just some of those people not really using and engaging in Twitter started doing so. Wow!

posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 10:25 PM by Colleen Pence


Very interesting data. These numbers will be changing quickly as Twitter continues to storm full speed ahead. Thanks for sharing.

posted on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 2:12 AM by Justin


What about all those #spymaster users? :)

posted on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 2:12 AM by vitaminjeff


Funny and I read about this post on Twitter - so am I that special?

posted on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 6:36 AM by Dylan Barber


Interesting statistics! I'd love to see Twitter provide more detailed analyses around the content of the tweets. Have just posted a blog to discuss a couple of aspects of social media analysis plus a few suggestions.

posted on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 12:36 PM by Manya Mayes


I've just read the synopsis so far, so I won't ask about the math (I bet it's all clarified in the paper), but I'm wondering whether it's possible to distinguish the private Twitterers who don't have a webpage and want some anonymity from the ones using Twitter for marketing. I have actually seen some businesses with no link to their homepage, but it surely can't be an error nearly 80% are making.

posted on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 4:36 PM by Rebecca Haden


Another great peice of work from you guys - keep it up 
 
 
 
In Ireland there was a recent article about the ability of on-line dating to work as we were described as only having 'one degress of separation' - as in its a small country where we all know someone, who knows you. 
 
 
 
This has been a problem on Twitter, as there are one or two small groups (12 pers) that interact and effectively exclude or in some cases actively deter anyone from entering the 'conversation' - so they are then by default ignored themselves > most active users end up tiny elite group with no influence at all - pointless. 
 
 
 
Any ideas how we can change this ?

posted on Friday, June 19, 2009 at 3:56 AM by Sheila


I'm equally as puzzled as DanDall: 
 
55.50% are not following anyone  
54.88% have never tweeted  
52.71% have no followers 
 
Only 9.06% have 'fewer than 10 followers, fewer than 10 friends, and fewer than 10 updates'? 
 
Can you guys clarify? 
 
Thanks, 
 
John

posted on Sunday, June 21, 2009 at 7:57 PM by John Haydon


To look at it from another perspective: if some 4.5 million accounts were counted, of which 51.71% have no followers, that means some 2,128,050 accounts do have followers. Yes, I too would be interested to see a Venn diagram of the categories - but any way we slice it, that's a 40-something percent adoption rate of a service where even its biggest fans are hard-pressed to give a concise explanation of the benefits of using it!

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With so much in the news about twitter, lot of people are giving it a try but I feel bulk of the users do not understand what to use it for.

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