What are the demographics of Twitter?

Twitter has taken off over the last few years, with on average, a million active users having tweeted at least a billion times over the last three years. Yet one quarter of Twitter users have never tweeted at all claims a comprehensive study of Twitter users across the world by social media specialist Beevolve. But those that do tweet are more likely to be young and female.

Gender distribution on Twitter

Source: Beevolve

There are more women than men on Twitter, as Beevolve’s CEO Goldee Udani explains: “The gender divide on Twitter is a little inclined towards females, with number of female users outnumbering the male Twitter users by 6 per cent”. Women are also more communicative on Twitter, as women tweet 610 times on average while men tweet 567 times on average.

Younger people far outnumber older age groups, with just six per cent falling in the 46-plus category. However, it is not easy to say exactly how many older people there are, as Goldee Udani says: “Since a lot of teenagers are comfortable disclosing their age on social networks compared to their older peers, the data here is skewed towards the younger demographic.” The chart below shows that a whopping 74 per cent of users fall between 15 to 25 years of age.

Self disclosed age distribution on Twitter

Source: Beevolve

When it comes to follower numbers, most Twitter users are following less than 50 people and only a tiny percentage have more than 100,000 followers. The average number of followers a Twitter user has is 208, but six out of 100 users have no followers at all. There is also a clear link between the number of tweets a person makes and the number of followers they have. So if you want to increase your followers, it is a good idea to be a regular tweeter.

Followers count distribution on Twitter

Source: Beevolve

And to end this report on a positive note, one of the most heart-warming findings of the study is that the word “love” is the most frequently used word in a Twitter user bio.

Background
 

Beevolve studied 36 million Twitter users over a span of three months from July to September 2012, using its own analytics platform to come up with gender, age-group and author category for each of the 36 million Twitter user.