« Google Maps Launches New Local Business Center Dashboard | Main | Minutes Online: Facebook, Tagged and Twitter Soars While MySpace Struggles »
June 2, 2009
Twitter's Glass Ceilings and Its 90/10 Problem
New Twitter stats from the Harvard Business School reveal interesting demographics surrounding the popular social chat network. Unlike other social networks, it's very male-centric and it's more like Wikipedia than Facebook. Let's dive into the data.
Men are more likely to follow men and have reciprocal relationships. Women are also more likely to follow men, despite women making up the majority of Twitter users at 55%.
Men also have 15% more followers than women.
It's the exact opposite on other social networking sites. Generally, both men and women are more likely to follow content produced by women.
But it's the top Twitterers who really tempt the Fail Whale. 90% of Tweets are written by 10% of the most prolific Twitterers. About half of Twitter users are tweeting just once every 74 days.
In most social networks, 10% of the top content producers account for 30% of all content produced.
Twitter is more like Wikipedia, whose top 15% contributors produce 90% of the content. The study's authors, Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski, suggest that Twitter is a one-to-many conversation tool like Wikipedia rather than it is a peer-to-peer social network.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on June 2, 2009 11:32 AM
Comments
Pat June 2, 2009 12:59 PM
Of all of the reality sites, I like Twitter the best, so far....
Hoss Bumgarner June 2, 2009 11:09 PM
what are the possibilities that twitter marketing will work? i truly think that we need to have real value to give to our loyal follower . getting the right content to get the right customer? it also let your ideas or anyone's ideas spreading all across the minds all over the world. then it is time when twitter money is a 'way to go'!
twitter money June 3, 2009 7:14 AM
LOL! Men are more to prone to conciseness... Might be a little truth to that depending on WHO your talking to! All kidding aside, I think Twitter is seen as the Simple Simon of Social Media but in all reality, there is an effective way to use Twitter to everyone's advantage. There is more to Twitter than meets the eye. People don't get Twitter... they need to be educated as to how it can benefit them. There is a reason for those 10% of prolific tweeters and why they tweet the way they do.
Shelly Lodes June 3, 2009 10:18 AM
Maybe it's because, on average, men are already more comfortable with the limitations of brevity. Men are typically (yes, there are lots of exceptions) more succinct in their communication. Twitter is THE medium for conciseness. Seems like a pretty simple connection to me.