Hooray for Twitter’s ‘Idle Class!’

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So a recent Harvard Business School study said 10% of Twitter users produce 90% of Tweets (http://bit.ly/hbstwit). Does that make Twitter a "Broadcast" medium? I don’t think so.

The lurkers, the "Idle Class" of social media, are important . Just as they are in blogs. If the 90% of idles are actually reading Tweets, who’s to say they are not enriched in some way? Who’s to say they don’t pass along the conversations offline?

I say bring on the lurkers and idles! The more the better! I’m comfortable with a "90/10" rule.

Are you?

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4 Responses to “Hooray for Twitter’s ‘Idle Class!’”

Bryan Person says:

June 16, 2009 at 8:57 am

Ahh, the never-ending question of what to do about the lurkers. In this instance, I agree with you. If that 90% (or at least a percentage of that 90%) is reading, “listening,” or otherwise deriving value without actually tweeting themselves, who are we 10 percenters to complain? :)
Doug Haslam says:

June 17, 2009 at 7:44 am

Thanks Bryan– people are pretty quick to read bad things into the report– I see more growing pains, but also some natural social selection.
Tim Allik says:

June 19, 2009 at 10:37 am

My dad used to work with Kraft in the 1980s. Their research showed that 10 percent of the public eats 90 percent of the sour cream. Some people just really get into things. At least Twitter has zero calories.
451 Heat » Recent Study Finds 90% of Tweets are Done by 10% of Twitter Users…So What? says:

December 10, 2009 at 3:36 pm

[...] social media blogger and tweeter Doug Haslem agrees, mentioning on his blog that “the lurkers, the ‘Idle Class’ of social media, are important…who’s to say they [...]