Twittering to Ourselves

Still recovering from a Nielsen research report earlier this year indicating that more than 60 percent of its U.S. users quit the social network within one month, Twitter, Inc., has taken another "cheep" shot from a study of 300,542 users by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor of Business Adminiistration Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and HBS graduate student Bill Heil.

The Harvard study found that 10 percent of Twitter users generate more than 90 percent of the content, compared to other social networks in which 10 percent of users provide 30 percent of content. The study discovered that half the people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days, and that most of the people tweeted only once.

Not only does the Harvard study indicate Twitter is the preserve of the few, but also uncovered a significant gender gap. In the sampling, men were twice as likely as women to follow other men, and women more than 25 percent more likely to follow a man than a woman, despite overall slighty higher usage by women.

Time to start posting "One-Way Tweet" signs on the virtual highway.