Only 8% of Internet Users Are On Twitter

By Ben Haber

December 9th, 2010

A new report has been published, which reveals that just 8 percent of Internet users are on Twitter. Furthermore, 21 percent of Twitter users report that they never check for material posted by other people. For a social network that’s attracted so much attention, it is surprising how few people actually use the service.

While Twitter can be very influential among the groups of people that actually use it, this report reveals how Twitter doesn’t have nearly the reach that Facebook has, which has over 500+ million. What’s also interesting is how many Twitter users don’t actually use the service to see material posted by other people. In fact, 19 percent of Twitter users use the service to post personal updates, which are often more self-focused instead of tweets that engage other users.

Based on this research (and other charts available in this report) it is clear that the majority of Twitter noise is being made by a shockingly small amount of users. Does this make Twitter unworthy of our attention? Not at all.

Twitter has approximately 200 million users and is very influential among people who use it regularly. Furthermore, it has huge mind share, which is evident through its prime placement on businesses’ advertisements and websites. And when it comes to customer service, contacting a company on Twitter has proven to be very successful.

But think about it for a second – just 8 percent of all Internet users. It’s a bit of a reality check.

Entry Filed under: Twitter