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