A new Yahoo Research study by the name of “Who Says What to Whom on Twitter” reveals that half of all Tweets that are consumed come from as little as 0.05% of Twitter Users. Approximately 20,000 Twitter users account for half of all the commotion on Twitter, which is around an impressive billion tweets a week.
Yahoo’s study analyzed 260 million tweets with URLs and, of those, almost 50% of the tweets consumed were published by what are known as the “elite” users. There are four classifications within the elitist category: celebrities, organizations, bloggers, and media. Everyone else would be considered “Ordinary” users.
Many researchers believe Twitter represents an information-sharing hub instead of a social network, in that a vast majority of what Twitter actually consists of are the elites building huge follower bases. However, the elites themselves aren’t following any of their consumers’ content. Twitter is essentially a place where users can go to for information, and not necessarily a place where they go to socialize.
Most studies have scraped the surface, but this one takes an in-depth look into the factual data of who is consuming who’s tweets. In short, ordinary users consume an extreme amount of tweets from celebrities and bloggers, while celebrities and bloggers typically only follow fellow celebrities and bloggers.
Is Twitter becoming an information hub and losing its name as a social network?
If you would like to view a PDF of the full 10 page study, click here.
Jason Coon
