10% of Twitter Users Create 80% of the Tweets

In America, 10% of Twitter's users create 80% of its tweets, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center: The median user in the top 10% by tweet volume creates 138 tweets per month, "favorites" 70 posts per month, follows 456 accounts, and has 387 followers. By comparison, the median user in the bottom 90% of tweeters creates just two tweets per month, "favorites" one post per month, follows 74 accounts, and has 19 followers. And when asked to report how often they use the platform, fully 81% of these highly active tweeters say they do so every day; 47% of other Twitter users visit the platform with this regularity...

Twitter users also tend to have higher levels of household income and educational attainment relative to the general adult population. Some 42% of adult Twitter users have at least a bachelor's degree -- 11 percentage points higher than the overall share of the public with this level of education (31%). Similarly, the number of adult Twitter users reporting a household income above $75,000 is 9 points greater than the same figure in the general population: 41% vs. 32%.

i just abandoned twitter

[FudRucker]

and deleted my account, they recently updated their website and i did not like it, and since i only followed one account and lurked without ever tweeting it made no sense to continue visiting twitter,

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

I don't even use the Internet, what does that say about me?

Re:

[RabidTimmy]

But unlike most stupid people, he's smart enough to not constantly demonstrate it all over the internet.

Re: i just abandoned twitter

[sound+vision]

It's a one-way communication medium for the rich and famous to beam their mental diarrhea directly to the palm of your hand. The statistic bear that out. I never saw the draw, personally. Maybe there's less annoying commentators in the way than TMZ.

Hooray for Statistics

[TechyImmigrant]

>10% of Twitter Users Create 80% of the Tweets

The Pareto distribution is a real thing y'know.

Re:

[Mikkeles]

10% of the worst produce 80% of bad stuff and 10% of the best produce 80% of the great stuff.

Has it ever been different?

10% of Slashdot users create 90% of the comments..

[innocent_white_lamb]

So what's new? A small minority of the users of any messaging thing will create most of the traffic and the rest of them will be reading the stuff that others have created.

That's just how it works.

Re:

[RabidTimmy]

I think that Anonymous Coward guy/gal alone creates 90% of the Slashdot posts. Now if only he/she was coherent.

no surprise there

[Anonymous Coward]

89% of twitter users hardly tweet at all after their first week using it.

Or so I'm led to believe.

Seriously though, "SMALLPERCENTAGE of people does LARGEPERCENTAGE of work" is a pretty universal truism.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

Seriously though, "SMALLPERCENTAGE of people does LARGEPERCENTAGE of work" is a pretty universal truism.

I prefer the phrase "John's doing all the fucking work [youtube.com]", it's much more descriptive of my workplace.

My name is John, by the way.

Including the bots?

[gurps_npc]

Because twitter had 330 million users (2019 source [statista.com]), and somewhere between 9-15% are bots. 2017 source [cnbc.com])

That means, that it could be ALL the top twitter users are bots - or none of course.

Not surprising

[Martin S.]

Before I deleted my twitter account I predominantly used it as a news feed following the BBC, local newspapers & radio. Occasionally replying with rebuttals, it was never for peer to peer comms for me.

Re: Media

[Anonymous Coward]

No, 85% of the top group are bots and sockpuppets.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

85% of the top group are bots, 12% are sockpuppets, 1% is Trump and the last 18% are a statistical anomaly.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

It's simply really. It's all in the title.

KICJ is a radio station licensed to Mitchellville, Iowa, serving the Des Moines area. The station is owned by the University of Northern Iowa.

So that means his whole comment that of a University student. As we all know, University students love to study. Heck, the very definition of a student is "a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution who attends classes in a course to attain the appropriate level of mastery of a subject" ... and some other s

Seems like an improvement

[Solandri]

Compared to the latter half of the 20th century, when 3 companies produced 100% of the broadcast news in the U.S.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

Holy (bad-place-that-you-end-up-in-for-your-religion), only 2.95 per month? I bet you don't live in Canada.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

What percentage are worth reading?

None at all.

By a curious coincidence, "None at all" is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claimed.

Pareto

[markdavis]

>"10% of Twitter's users create 80%"

How DARE they violate the 80/20 rule!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

(Actually, it is surprising how often the Pareto Principle seems to be true or close to true for many phenomenon).

Slashdot

[DontBeAMoran]

And 2% of Slashdot users are responsible for 93% of funny-yet-pointless posts.

Ref: see my other posts.

And

[ArchieBunker]

the entire contents of Twitter is 100% garbage.

Not unusual.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The power rule applies to so many different things. 80% of the income by 20% of the people, even in the top quintile it apllies, 64% of the income by 4% of the people and again, 51.2% of income by 0.8% of the people.!

Also 80% of the papers by 20% of the academics, 80% of crime by 20% of the criminals, 20% of the storms releasing 80% of all energy released by storms, same for earthquakes.

Interestingly, Gangan Prathap [1], (president gold medal winner, IIT Madras, later Diro of NAL) wrote a paper arguing, "When India loses half of its IIT grads to brain drain, it is probably losing half its intellectual potential, once you apply the power rule". Actually it was that paper where I came across the power-rule for the first time. ( BTW Gangan Prathap never left India. )

[1] Dr Gangan Prathap [google.com]

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"When India loses half of its IIT grads to brain drain, it is probably losing half its intellectual potential, once you apply the power rule".

Judging by the ones I've met that means the rest of them must be barely able to dress themselves.

Let me guess

[nospam007]

The ones selling something.

That's nothing

[rsilvergun]

60% of them are the current US president tweeting "No Collusion" in caps.

Re:

[Highdude702]

Don't turn around, Trump is right behind you!!! Run!

Re:

[Highdude702]

TRUMP SAID RUSSIA!! IMPEACH!!!

This is what you guys sound like..

Re:

[Soporific]

Basically.

Out of his 30,000+ keyboard drooling tweets, 452 have been about Russia and Collusion.

http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/ [trumptwitterarchive.com]

10% of Users Create 80% of content

[Big Nemo '60]

And this is a bad thing? (Unless most of that 10% were bots, _that _ would be a bad thing.)

Blessed those who have nothing to say, and do not give in to temptation to say it...

Question: when they talk about user "creating" tweets - do they refer to tweets starting a new conversation, or also tweets adding to an ongoing conversation? (The latter are mostly worthless)

Why is this news?

[guacamole]

I mean, if you were lurking on web based forums, or say on USENET, then you would already know that a few regulars generate the most posts. Another non-news article.

I'm honestly surprised it's that high.

[shess]

I'd have expected 10% of users create 95% of tweets, or 5% create 90%, something like that.

In fact, I kind of wonder if networks of low-volume bots trying to build karma are skewing this.