Twitter passes 75m users, but most are inactive

Micro-blogging site Twitter has managed to attract more than 75 million users since its launch. However, not only is the growth rate of new users slowing, much of the current userbase is inactive.

According to research by RJMetrics, a company responsible for developing online metrics software, whilst the rate of new user growth peaked in July 2009 with 7.8 million additions every month, current additions have dropped to 6.2 million new users a month.

Speaking on the findings, Robert J Moore, CEO and founder of RJMetrics, said: “When you look at new account registrations, no one can deny that Twitter is still growing like a rocket ship. That’s good.” Moore added: “However, upon closer inspection, the rate of new user sign-ups has dropped meaningfully from its peak and many new users never do anything with their accounts. That’s bad. Furthermore, the percentage of accounts sending out tweets has steadily decline over the past six months. That’s worse.”

RJMetrics found whilst a lot of Twitter accounts aren’t active, the number of accounts that didn’t even send one tweet through the whole of December hit an all time low(17 per cent). This is compared to 70 per cent in early 2007. It is now thought Twitter has between 10-15 million active Twitterers.

New users don’t seem to be making much of a presence. According to the report the average Twitter user has 27 followers, down from 42 followers in August 2009. Around 25 per cent of users don’t have any followers at all, with a significant 40 per cent only having between one and five followers. Explaining this trend Moore commented: “…we know that users acquire more followers the longer they are on the system.”

RJMetric came to the conclusion, if new Twitter users stick with the service over the first week rather than simply signing up to see what the fuss is, they have a higher rate of engagement with the site as time goes on. 

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