In today's blog post on the well respected blog Business Insider Henry Blodgett stated "THE TRUTH ABOUT TWITTER: Half Of Twitter Users Never Listen To A Word Anyone Else Says"
This is presented as some great revelation of startling proportions! OMG! Half of my Twitter followers never even read anything. It's all a tremendous waste of time!
Let's put it in perspective.
Over half of all Twitter accounts are abandoned. This is not news to those in the business who have followed Twitter over the years. Estimates of abandoned accounts run in the 40% - 60% range. (Facebook's abandonment numbers are better but estimates still run as high as 35%.)
In all forms of social media there are a small subset of people who generate the majority of content and participate most often. For further thoughts on this concept look at the 90-9-1 rule.
Well under half of the subscribers to any publication, magazine, newspaper, etc read any given article, or view any given ad. You can't track eyes on pages of paper the way you can on digital media. Why isn't that an issue? Because paper media has been around and we've grown accustomed to it's lack of hard data.
What Twitter is Good At
Twitter is great for finding influencers, bloggers and media personalities in general. It's good for amplifying your story. It's good for finding what the industry is talking about, almost any industry. Generally people in the business of communicating.
Engagement- Twitter is a great tool for approaching and engaging people you've never dealt with before. It is how you can expand and engage with new people, often influential people in your industry. It's better than Facebook or LinkedIn because a Twitter connection doesn't imply any endorsement like being a friend or connection on these other networks.
If you are engaged with your Twitter Followers you don't care how many abandoned accounts there are, because the accounts you're dealing with are not abandoned.
What Twitter isn't Good At
Keeping up with your friends. Informing your customer base of important news- except if your trying to get to press and influencers, who will then inform your customer base. Communicating with your employees.
Why isn't Twitter good for these tasks? Because most of these groups of people aren't on Twitter. You want to talk with your friends, use Facebook because most likely they will be on there. You want to talk with your employees? Use email because most of them will be on there.
Give me 1 Good Reason why you think it matters how many abandoned accounts there are on Twitter?