Half of Twitter Users Are Lurkers, Here’s What You Should Know About Them

When you go on Twitter, chances are that you would come across several different users that would have pretty massive followings. These users are some of the most visible ones on the platform, but did you know that nearly half of Twitter users in America tweet less than five times in a month? This makes them inactive tweeters, and they are sometimes informally referred to as lurkers who might use the app a lot but don’t post that many tweets on it, as highlighted by Pew.

49% of Twitter users can be referred to as lurkers because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up accurately representing the low volume of tweets that they give out on a monthly basis. This includes original tweets, retweets, quote retweets as well as replies to other tweets with all things having been considered and taken into account. Another thing to note that lurkers are usually between the ages of 30 and 49.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that around 41% of people that are called frequent tweets are between the ages of eighteen and twenty nine. Only 14% of Twitter users that are a part of this age bracket are lurkers which contrasts quite drastically with the 59% of user between 30 and 49 that conform to this kind of label. Users that are older than fifty are more or less split evenly between frequent and infrequent tweeter categories.

People that tweet actively are also more likely to use the app frequently, with 55% of active tweeters stating that they visit the website or app on a daily basis. 21% of lurkers said the same, with 38% saying that they tend to check the social media platform out at least once or twice a week. This makes a lot of sense since using the platform more often will obviously make it more likely that you would start engaging with the content that you see by posting a relatively high number of tweets and interacting with your timeline in various other ways as well.
Lurkers also tend to use Twitter for different reasons than active tweeters. 76% of lurkers claim that they are trying to see other viewpoints and read up on what other people have to say whenever they use the platform, with only 6% saying that their main purpose for using the platform is to express things that they themselves believe in.

However, both active and inactive tweeters have similar proportions of individuals whose main reason for visiting the site is for the purposes of entertainment, with 40% of infrequent tweeters and 48% of frequent ones saying that this is the case.

Another fact about lurkers that you might want to keep in mind is that they generally have fewer followers than frequent tweeters which is logical since being active on the site is the easiest way for someone or the other to start building a following. They also follow fewer accounts which might have a lot to do with them not coming across that many Twitter users that they might be interested in.

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