Twitter Activity: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Twitter spokesman Ryan Sarver has argued that“90 percent of active Twitters users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis.” Twitter defines “official” as applications it owns and operates for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone.

Sysomos was surprised by that assertion, as its data has suggested there were significantly more “non-official” users. In a June 2009 report, Sysomos found that TweetDeck had nearly 20 percent of the client market.

Sysomos then reviewed a sample of 25 million tweets on March 11, 2011. The data shows that 42 percent of tweets were made by non-officials apps, more than four times the amount claimed by Twitter.

One way of reconciling the data is to argue that power users who do more tweeting use the "unofficial" clients, while many Twitter client users are relatively inactive.

Non-Official Twitter Clients Still Widely Used, Sysomos Blog