Who,What,When,Where and Why Is There A Twitter?

As Twitter has gained in popularity, some are asking what the heck is the purpose of Twitter? Is it just a social networking site or an outlet for retail marketing? No matter where we turn, whether on radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and more, it appears that everyone has a Twitter address. Even some of the major celebrities have taken up the Twitter fad. But now over at Harvard Business they are taking a hard look at the Twitter phenomena and evaluating Twitter in depth.

The HB report states the following:

Of our sample (300,542 users, collected in May 2009), 80% are followed by or follow at least one user. By comparison, only 60 to 65% of other online social networks’ members had at least one friend (when these networks were at a similar level of development). This suggests that actual users (as opposed to the media at large) understand how Twitter works.

Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women. Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This “follower split” suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships. This is intriguing, especially given that females hold a slight majority on Twitter: we found that men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. To get this figure, we cross-referenced users’ “real names” against a database of 40,000 strongly gendered names.

The report also states:

At the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue – Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia’s edits ⁱⁱ. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.

This one statement is very interesting.

Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets.

Which makes one wonder just how popular Twitter really is? If 10% of users account for 90% of the postings, that doesn’t say much for the popularity of Twitter. But what do you think? Is Twitter just a passing fad?

Personally I believe that is exactly what it is.

Comments welcome.

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