Twitter continues to grow at an impressive rate with a 16% jump in visits from May to June. With studies suggesting that the majority of Twitter users are not active participants, we thought it would be interesting to study tweeting behavior in more detail. So, we sampled over 4 million Twitter users and analyzed the distribution of their tweet frequency.
Here’s what we found:
Distribution of Total Tweets

Highlights:
- 76% of Twitter users have sent less than five tweets; of those, half have never tweeted
- The cutoff for the top 10% of Twitter users is 50 tweets
- The top 1% of Twitter users have sent over 1,000 tweets
Concluding Thoughts
With the vast majority of users rarely tweeting, Twitter seems to be used by a small crowd of active tweeters to distribute content to a larger audience. Marketers should focus on engaging influential users with high follower counts and frequent tweets.


12 Trackbacks
Rapleaf Study on Twitter Use and Tweet Distribution – http://bit.ly/167Y5G
RT @auren: RT @vsodera: 76% of Twitterers have tweeted < 5 times total. Rapleaf study sampling 4MM ppl: http://bit.ly/raptweet
rapleaf study shows 76% of Twitterers tweet 0-5 times…total. http://bit.ly/OObfZ #rapleaf
RT @pzuta: RT @auren: RT @vsodera: 76% of Twitterers have tweeted < 5 times total. Rapleaf study sampling 4MM ppl: http://bit.ly/raptweet
RT @auren 76% of Twitterers have tweeted < 5 times total. Rapleaf study sampling 4MM ppl: http://bit.ly/raptweet
RT @auren @vsodera: 76% of Twitterers have tweeted < 5 times total. Rapleaf study sampling 4MM ppl: http://bit.ly/raptweet
RT: @auren: RT @vsodera: 76% of Twitterers have tweeted < 5 times total. Rapleaf study sampling 4MM ppl: http://bit.ly/raptweet
RT @vsodera: 76% of Twitterers have tweeted < 5 times total. Rapleaf study sampling 4MM ppl: http://bit.ly/raptweet
@MrWibbly You’re now in the top 1% of Tweeters… http://bit.ly/OObfZ (via @universityboy)
@MrWibbly You’re now in the top 1% of Tweeters… http://bit.ly/OObfZ
[...] From the Study: Highlights: + 76% of Twitter users have sent less than five tweets; of those, half have never tweeted + The cutoff for the top 10% of Twitter users is 50 tweets + The top 1% of Twitter users have sent over 1,000 tweets [...]
[...] I’ve seen the results of yet another study, this time carried out by RapLeaf, an online reputation management company, which has different results but is still worth taking a [...]