It may seem that the entire online world is always banging on about Twitter, but research from web security firm Purewire suggests that not everyone may be feeling the Twitter-love.
The company evaluated the profiles of millions of Twitter users to show off the abilities of their new Tweet Grade web tool (unfortunately, their website appears to be down at the moment so we can’t tell you anything about what it does).
Despite the buzz, it seems that far less people are actually using and contributing to Twitter than the hype would suggest, with a large percentage of Twitter users untroubling the online world with a single “tweet” from the day they join.
Analysing profile data from 7 million user profiles, Purewire found that at least a quarter of Twitter users don’t have any followers at all, and that many Twitter users “abandoned their accounts shortly after creating them, 
and a significant percentage are not showing signs of account activity”.
Their research also found that well over a third of Twitter users (40 percent) haven’t twittered a tweet since their first day on the service and that Twitter is being used “more as a mass medium for receiving information, rather than as a way to interact with others.”
Around half of Twitter users are following more people than they have as followers, with around a third following the same number of people that are following them. In other words, most Twitterers attract a tiny audience, and are often only read by the same people following each other.
Twitter is definitely overhyped, to the point of the application being nearly useless. The main redeeming quality is that with so much link juice behind it, Twitter can help someone occupy another spot in the SERPS for their name or company identity. Otherwise, it’s a huge resource drain and time waster.
John Barremore
Houston, TX