Fred Wilson noted a few days ago that there were 400M unique visitors to Twitter.com and only 100M people logged in. That implies that 25% of the people who visit Twitter.com don’t login. On top of that, there are about 40% of active users that do not tweet at all. These statistics may sound discouraging, but they shouldn’t be viewed that way. I can think of at least three different ways that non-logged in or non-tweeting Twitter users use Twitter.com:
- Real-time news updates. I know several people who don’t normally check Twitter who checked it after the Earthquake to be sure they really felt what they thought they felt. Similarly, a friend of mine, Bojan, recently told me how he used a carefully constructed Twitter search to tell him when concert tickets went on sale for a popular show by waiting for someone to tweet that they got tickets.
- Stalking. I use the word half jokingly, but half seriously. It’s sometimes interesting to see what a new colleague or friend or (as Fred points out) family member or company is doing on Twitter in the same way you’d visit their website. These one-off views don’t require a login at all.
- Your basic listening. There are a lot of funny and interesting people on Twitter. Sounds like about 40% of users simply like to see what people they know, celebrities, etc… are tweeting.
Even people that don’t use Twitter at all are still likely to see news stories where someone quotes a celebrity’s Twitterfeed or CNN tools that monitor the “mood” of the nation during a debate. It is becoming really interesting how Twitter has become a tool for everyone even though a relatively small portion of the world actively tweets.
