The Most Comprehensive Research On Twitter Use – Ever!
January 19, 2010 at 9:20 am
Sysomos, a US agency, analysed 11.5 million Twitter accounts and produced a report in June 2009, the findings of which just don’t resonate with me to be accurate or truly representative. I’m sceptical because nowhere does it mention how the 11.5 million accounts were sourced. The following stats just don’t ring true:
- 72.5% of all Twitter users joined during the first five months of 2009
- 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
- 21% of users have never posted a Tweet= 2.4 million of the sample have blank twitter pages?
- 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity
- There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%). – that’s not my experience of it, and it’s certainly not what’s showing in Ireland’s most influential (see below)
Apart from the 4 companies on there, they are all men! Source: WeFollow.com
They’ve Got The Average Age All Wrong
“Based on a sample set of users who disclosed their age, 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25.”
But only 0.7% disclosed their age, it was optional. Would the correct statement on this be that, of the participants who completed the survey or allowed access to their Twitter page, only the 25 year olds were happy to say how old they were!
Many under 25 year olds are college students. I’ve been reading a lot about college students and their habits this year as they tend to be the most typical sample used in academic research. They are big on IM and texting, loving Facebook, but not so into LinkedIn or Twitter. It would be interesting to have run the research on this same sample about LinkedIn – there could be shocking headlines now “0.005% use LinkedIn more than once a month” – which is clearly not the case!
Consider the graphic below – look at the high proportion of 15-19 year olds – again I ask Where Did They Get Their Sample From? High school prom night?
5% Make The Most Noise
Sysmos discovered that 5% of users accounted for 75% of all Twitter activity.
A closer look reveals that nearly all of them are bots operated by hotels, news and weather services, financial aggregators, and tagging sites such as del.icio.us. You’d expect they’d have removed the bots from the sample and reported on the top 5% of non-bot users? But no they didn’t. Probably because it wouldn’t have generated such an interesting headline.
I’m not celeb-lover but I have been known to browse the mags while getting my hair done – and yet I have never heard of 3 out of the 5 top celebs. Have you heard of Tyrese (@tyrese4real), Alyssa Milano (@alyssa_milano), or Tila Tequila (@officialtila)?
There’s a whole lot more, but really it’s quite underwhelming. Read full research findings here.
And so the quest for realistic Twitter research continues…
Tags: Twitter research
