Doua despre Twitter: Studiu Harvard ; presa britanica

Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found.

More than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days.

Recent figures from research firm Nielsen Online show that visitors to the site increased by 1,382%, from 475,000 to seven million, between February 2008 and February 2009. It is thought to have grown beyond 10 million in the past 4 months.

By comparison, Facebook – one of the most popular social networking sites by number of visitors – has 200 million active users and grew by 228% during the same period.

Research by Nielsen also suggests that many people give the service a try, but rarely or never return.

Earlier this year, the firm found that more than 60% of US Twitter users failed to return the following month.

The Harvard  found that men had 15% more followers than women despite there being slightly more females users of Twitter than males.

It also showed that an average man was almost twice as likely to follow another man than a woman, despite the reverse being true on other social networks.

“The sort of content that drives men to look at women on other social networks does not exist on Twitter,” said Mr Heil.

“By that I mean pictures, extended articles and biographical information.”

However, said Mr Heil, the most striking result was that so few people used the service to publish information, preferring instead to be passive consumers.

For example, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one.

“Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends,” he said.

“It looks like a few people are creating content for a few people to read and share.”

Mai multe aici.

Malcolm Coles:

National newspapers have a total of 1,068,898 followers across their 120 official Twitter accounts – with the Guardian, Times and FT the only three papers in the top 10.