How Many People Are Really Tweeting?

Twitter may claim 175 million registered users, but anyone who’s looked at their “@” messages knows at least some of those users are really spambots quoting lines from Star Wars or Raiders of The Lost Ark the second you mention George Lucas. So how many people are really on Twitter?

The people at BusinessInsider wondered the same thing, and with the help of someone who had access to Twitter’s internal statistics, managed to get as close as we’re likely to, short of Twitter coming out and revealing all.

Using data from March, it’s been established that out of 175 million registered users, 90 million have zero followers, and 56 million follow no one at all. And 56 million follow more than eight other Twitter accounts, while just 36 million follow 16 or more people on the service.

If the Facebook baseline metric of 10 or more friends convincing a user to keep an account active is applied, Twitter’s active user base plummets from the official 175 million total figure to somewhere between 36 and 56 million. Still nothing to sneeze at, but perhaps Twitter should adjust their boast to something a bit closer to the truth.

More on Techland:

Twitter Nixes the QuickBar from iPhone App

Twitter Co-Founder: I’m Still Involved, but I’m Planning Something Else

If You Use Twitter, You’re Probably One Of These Dots

pks29733steel

Twitter is just full of ‘Twits’. A waste of time. I would rather read an article than deal with a short ‘tweet’ or ‘tweet spam’!!
http://trgdyann68.wordpress.com trgdyann68

Twitter ‘Twit’ here & I STILL have managed to have a’REAL’Life,Own my own Business, raise children AND Tweet. Still haven’t seen a need for a’Twitter-vention’ Yet! *giggling*
Brian Myers

I use Twitter to follow business and industry trends. In this respect Twitter is actually a great tool as I hear about industry trends, articles, software releases and company moves within hours (or minutes) of when they occur.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alangray alangray53

I find Twitter to be a useful and very nifty way to stay abreast of breaking news and trends across a wide waterfront of my idiosyncratic interests. I see little difference between tweets and all-too-brief sound bites served up online or offline by the major news media.
http://progressivetoo.wordpress.com michaelshatz

I used twitter to build a large network of political news junkies, and yes, I also have an extensive network of unwanted spammers, but it weighs out…
jes501

No need to tweet to love Twitter. Follow the best sources and your Twitter timeline or lists can be like Google news on steroids. NY Times pay wall taught me to make the most of Twitter as a news aggregator. iPad Twitter app is better than using Twitter on a regular computer. Facebook may keep you in touch with out of town friends and family, but Twitter can keep you in touch with the world.
http://kelenike.wordpress.com kelenike

Sure, Twitter *could* “adjust their boast to something a bit closer to the truth” *if*…

… the “someone” reported by Business Insider who allegedly claimed to have “full access to Twitter’s API” and who allegedly took it upon himself to allegedly “have” [someone else] write up “some code” that allegedly, accurately & “actually” counted the real number of users on Twitter” has — in unalleged corroborated confirmed cross-checked double-checked peer-reviewed *fact* — conveyed the “truth.”