100k Irish on Twitter, but many just curious

THE Irish Twittersphere is “inhabited” by up to 100,000 users, but many are just curious observers and often leave their own online message spaces lying idle.

According to research at NUI Galway, Irish people are signing up to Twitter in increasing numbers.

But many users on the message service have barely said a few words on their own mini-blogs.

One-in-four Irish users have posted less than 10 status updates, said college social media researcher John Conroy.

“Some of those will have been new [users] but others will have gone on to the site but maybe are not able to figure it out or had no interest in it and just left. It’s a big number of people who fall into that category.”

Furthermore, two-thirds of Irish users post less than once a week on the online messaging service.

“Some users are very prolific while others never really take to it,” added Mr Conroy.

Galway researchers looked at trends and the usage of Twitter during the month of February this year and concluded that there are between 70,000 and possibly now up to 100,000 users of the service.

While there are those who sign up and move on, there are many who have posted thousands of messages on the social networking site since their accounts began.

Up to 11% of Irish Twitter users have put up more than 1,000 messages on their mini-blogs, researchers said.

Research on the growth of Twitter in Ireland and abroad will be presented at the BlogTalk Galway 2010 conference this week.

Researchers have also compiled a “who’s who” of the most-replied-to Irish tweets. The most-replied-to Irish account was “planetjedward”, a blog for the twin pop stars, followed by posts placed on “thescript”, a site for the Dublin band.

Other most-replied-to Irish tweeters include “darraghdoyle”, the communications manager with boards.ie, as well as “rayfoleyshow”, a site for the popular Today FM programme.

The Irish researchers predict that Twitter worldwide is likely to start regularly exceeding a hundred million tweets a day in the autumn.

Speakers at this week’s Galway conference include Fergus Hurley, an Irish man who started up Clixtr, a photo-sharing website linked to mobile phones, and Ted Vickey, a former official with the White House who will speak about maximising the impact of one’s CV online.