Tweetaholics Keeping Twitter Alive?

Twitter has had astounding growth since its inception in 2007, most notably in 2009. According to research by RJMetrics (@rjmetrics) Twitter now sports a user base of 75 million users and climbing at a rate of 6.2 million accounts per month. For anyone that has ever created a product this phenomenal growth patter is envious for sure.

Is growth everything?

Well, if you had a product that most people never used, but at least they bought it, you would of course be happy. Yet, what happens to your advocates that would continue that growth? If they are not using the product they will not talk about it. In reality, even a growth pattern that appears to be a rocket ship taking off could very well be stunted.

The basic principle of Twitter is engaging in conversations and in order to do that there must be the person the talking and of course someone listening, and hopefully responding. In the case of Twitter there is certainly an imbalance as shown by this chart provided by RJ Metrics.

It is apparent from this chart that a quarter of those on Twitter have absolutely no one following them. To take this point one step further there is another chart provided by RJ Metrics that illustrates the users by the number of updates that they have sent out since joining Twitter.

Just a guess based on the chart it appears that on average there are 1/3 of the Twitter users with no updates at all. Going back to what it takes to create a conversation it would seem that there are large number of Twitter users that are not listening, and an even larger number that isn’t talking at all.

Over the life of Twitter there has been a steady decline in those that are talking, ranging from the all time high of over 50% of the user base tweeting to now only sporting a 17% user engagement.

This steady decline seems very troubling, and may indicate that even though Twitter has a large user base the service is skirting extinction. Or is it?

So What Keeps Twitter Ticking?

Do the above charts spell doom for Twitter? RJ Metrics also found out something very interesting about the users that are listening and talking.

RJ Metrics continued analysis and found that with the users that make it past the first week of opening their account there is a tremendous loyalty that is built that results in a high level of engagement in conversations. Furthermore, it was found that those users that stick to it will actually become more active over time.

Even though only around 20% of the 75 million user base falls into this category of engaged Twitter users that actually amounts to roughly 15 million users.

In the end, Twitter is no different than any product or service, it is a relatively small, loyal user base in relation to the potential user base that keeps the product going.