Sheep Rule 80% of Twitter

There have been a number of articles recently around the fact that 80% of twitter accounts have less than 10 followers. While some have blamed Spammers and other ‘squatters’ I reckon it may be a lot simpler than that ….

The stats that have got people debating are:

Followers
Accounts with 0 followers: 29.4%
Accounts with 1 to 9 followers: 50.9%
Accounts with 10 or more followers: 19.7%

Followings
Accounts following 0 people: 24.4%
Accounts following 1 to 9 people: 43.4%
Accounts following 10 or more people: 32.2%

Tweets
Accounts with 0 Tweets: 37.1%
Accounts with 1 to 9 Tweets: 41.0%
Accounts with more 10 or more Tweets: 21.9%

Of course wiser and more experienced heads than mine have looked at this, but maybe just maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by the figures (can’t say I was surprised at all) as Twitter is after all ‘just one of many’ social media options. OK it may be the best (gets my vote), but at the end of the day for the vast majority of people it is ‘just another’ means of communicating with the same set of friends that they communicate with anyway. My guess is that a lot of people gave it a look, told their ‘best friends’ about it, they all signed up, had a go, then decided that it didn’t add anything to what they already had.

It could well be as simple as that!

Why the ‘sheep’ in the title? Not sure really!!! Started of thinking that it was a bit like sheep grazing and not really going anywhere, then couldn’t work that analogy into the post, but liked the title LOL

Sources: Shoemoney, Techcrunch

2 thoughts on “Sheep Rule 80% of Twitter

  1. gara

    “Sheep” I think the analogy fits fairly well.
    As for just tweeting your everyday friends, I don’t do that. As for people that I actually know, I follow the sum total of 3! And 2 are relatives. They rarely tweet at all after getting me to sign up!
    I think maybe a lot of people just want to accumulate “numbers.” I don’t. And I regularly go thru new followers & check them out. If they don’t fit in my interests I don’t follow back. If I get businesses or pornheads I block them.
    Anyway, I’m probably rambling by now, but I have a great group of people that I follow & who follow me back. Twitted, to me, is more than a social tool, it’s a learning tool if you know how to tweet it!

  2. Chris Marshall Post author

    Can’t argue with that. To me a real benefit of Twitter is that it can be different things to different people.

    I have many ‘groups’ within the people I follow, just as in real life I have different groups of people that I spend time with.

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