A recently released report from the Pew Research Center has offered new insights into the usage of social networking site Twitter by US adults.
The report analysed the habits of 2,791 US adults between November and December 2018. One of the more interesting statistics to come out of the report is the suggestion that the Twitterverse is dominated by just a small percentage of its user base. It found that the majority of its users rarely tweet and when they do, its little and not often. It revealed that the most active 10% of its users account for as much as 80% of all tweets.
The Pew report notes that only 22% currently use Twitter at all and are representative of the wider population in certain ways, but not at all in others.
It found that although the average age of an American is 47, the average US Twitter user is younger at just 40. In terms of other demographics, it was found that Twitter users tend to have a higher household income and higher levels of educational attainment in comparison to the general population.
Almost half, 42%, of the USA’s adult Twitter base are educated to at least a bachelor degree level, which is more than the 31% of the US population with this level of education. Income is often heavily correlated with level of education and the report suggests that 41% of US Twitter users have a household income exceeding $75,000, compared with 32% of the general population.
In terms of activity on the site, the Pew study found that the average user tweets only two times per month. This means that the majority of interaction on the platform is dominated by those considered to be extremely active, which shows that the majority of content on Twitter has been created by a small number of users, with 10% of users accounting for 80% of tweets.
The average activity of a user in the top 10% includes 138 tweets a month and favourites 70 tweets. On average, these accounts follow 456 other accounts and have around 387 followers. The majority of users in this bracket are female (65%) and tweet about politics, with 69% stating this is a topic they tweet about.
This compares to the other 90% who tweet on average twice a month and favourite one tweet a month. They follow 74 accounts and have 19 followers. Just over half (52%) are male and only 39% admit to tweeting about politics, with just 13% say they have tweeted about it in the last month.
Twitter also made some announcements of its own, reporting its first quarter revenue. It also noted that its monthly active user base now stood at 330 million, which is down 6% on the same period of last year.
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