A recent study suggests around 44% of Twitter accounts have never even sent a tweet. For a site that prides itself on being the most popular social networking site, this is pretty disparaging news, especially considering the percentage equates to over 428 million “dormant” accounts. Now, “dormant” doesn’t necessarily mean “inactive” in this situation. Many Twitter users choose not to tweet, but instead to read. “To be sure, people don’t have to actively tweet to find the service useful. There’s more than enough stuff to read on almost any topic in the world on Twitter to keep users occupied.”
Twitter, like any other social media site, is designed for active participation. Researchers claim passive participation is highly negative and can lead to the downfall of a website, but they rarely highlight the benefits of this kind of involvement. In fact, some say passive users are a necessity to social media sites.
“Unless you can build a firm foundation of people who are engaged with you at a more passive level of watching and sharing, it’s very difficult to create that audience for the people who are commenting and producing content.”
Another startling statistic is that only 13% of Twitter accounts have written at least 100 tweets. Almost every individual user I follow on Twitter has tweeted over 100 times. I don’t tweet nearly as often as some of the accounts I follow, but that’s no indication as to how much time I actually spend on Twitter. I enjoy being a somewhat passive user of social media; I contribute content, but I take in content more often.
That being said, I don’t think Twitter should worry about the survey findings. Sure, most of inactive accounts are permanently inactive, but many are likely just passive readers. If you consider that 127 million users are active tweeters, that’s still a pretty impressive following.