In-Depth Look Inside the Twitter World

A recent analysis by Sysomos of Twitter data leads to some amazing conclusions:

[via Sysomos | In-Depth Look Inside the Twitter World]

Over the past few months, Twitter has experienced explosive growth, attracting celebrity users such as Oprah, and a growing mountain of media and blog coverage. Sysomos Inc., one of the world’s leading social media analytics companies, conducted an extensive study to document Twitter’s growth and how people are using it. After analyzing information disclosed on 11.5 million Twitters accounts, we discovered that:

* 72.5% of all users joining 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

* 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people.

* 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity

* New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over the first five months of 2009

* More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.

* There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)

* Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.

“We wanted to take an extensive snapshot of Twitter that goes far beyond anything done to document Twitter’s use, growth and demographics,” said Nick Koudas, Sysomos’ co-founder and chief executive. “While Twitter’s growth has been well documented, we wanted to put the spotlight on how people use Twitter, as well as identify many of the key trends in their backgrounds, demographics and activity. Our study, based on the most comprehensive dataset of Twitter users, provides a wealth of information for anyone interested in getting in-depth details about Twitter.”

To discuss this report on Twitter, use the hashtag #sysomossurvey or copy us @sysomos. Visit the appendix for complete list of graphs. For more Twitter analysis studies by Sysomos, see the right-side navigation bar with a list of related articles.

One in five users have never tweeted? I believe that 5% account for 75%: the true Twitterheads.

The thing that strikes me is the a/ rapid growth in 2009, and the b/ shift in in demographics toward younger people. Maybe the MySpace defectors really are showing up at Twitter.