Less than half of all Twitter users have actually tweeted

As I write this, I’ve tweeted close to 39,000 times. But according to one report, a large chunk of you have never sent a single tweet. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Twitter analytics company Twopcharts says that, according to its data, 44 percent of Twitter accounts have never tweeted.  No “Trying out this Twitter thing.” No “Just setting up my tweetz.” Not even “Hi.” The Journal places Twitter’s userbase at 974 million accounts, so if you do the math, that’s roughly 429 million accounts that have been silent.

Twitter is having no trouble signing up users. But some new research provides an update on the size of an ongoing problem: getting people to tweet. A report from Twopcharts, a website that monitors Twitter account activity, states that about 44% of the 974 million existing Twitter accounts have never sent a tweet. Twopcharts, which provided some data about tweeting activity last month, is unable to track when someone has logged into their account. It can only tell when the account retweets or tweets its own message. Twitter said it has 241 million monthly active users the last three months of 2013. Twitter defines a monthly active user as an account that logs in at least once a month. By Twitter’s standards, a person does not have to tweet to be considered a monthly active user.