Nearly one-quarter of Twitter users (22.5%) account for 90% of all tweets posted on the popular microblogging site, while a small hard-core group of Twitter users (2.2%) account for over one-half (58.3%) of tweet activity, according to a study by Sysomos.

Most Twitter users (80.6%) have issued fewer than 500 tweets, while only 2.7% have made more than 5,000 tweets.

Below, other findings from the Sysomos report titled Inside Twitter, based on Twitter activity of 20 million Twitter users in 2010.

New-User Population Increased in 2010

New users accounted for nearly 44% of the total Twitter population from January to mid-August 2010, while those who created a profile before January 2009 accounted for just 4.7% of the total population.

Interestingly, Twitter users are divulging more personal information in their Twitter profiles, including across key information categories:

• Personal bios: 63.3% of Twitter users now provide a personal bio on their profile, up from the 31% who did so in 2009.
• Detailed names: 82% of users provide a full name, compared with 33% a year earlier.
• Location info: 73% of users provide location information, compared with 44% in 2009.
• Web addresses: 45% of users submit a website URL, compared with 22% a year earlier.

Friend Levels

Most Twitter users (95.75%) have fewer than 500 friends and roughly 2.05% have more than 1,000 friends.

Only 0.05% of users have more than 10,000 friends.

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Looking further at Twitter connections, the number of Twitter user with more than 100 friends has increased three-fold to 21% in 2010, from 7% in 2009. Meanwhile, the number of users with up to five friends fell to 21% in 2010, from 37% a year earlier.

Friend-Follower Ratio

Sysomos also explored the average ratios of Twitter friends to Twitter followers. The number of followers that users have relative to their friend levels is fairly even on average, until users reach 1,050 followers. After that threshold, the numbers start to skew, with numbers of followers outpacing friends. For example:

• Users with 1,050 followers have 1,003 friends on average.
• Users with 1,500 followers only 1,137 friends.
• Users with 5,000 followers have 3,711 friends on average.

The follower-friend ratio becomes balanced again among users with 10,000 followers, who have 9,636 friends on average.

The Most Active Tweeters

Most active tweeters are automatic feed generators: qanow (@qanow) tops the list of the most active tweet contributors. That account has posted more than 366,000 tweets.

Among the few real people on the list are Mike Hanes (@mikehanes), an IT recruiter who has made 300,000+ tweets, and Dustin Labarge (@dustinlabarge), a writer who has issued more than 117,000 tweets.

Bio Keywords

Within the bios of Twitter users, the most popular keywords are love, life, music, follow, Twitter, world, live, student, know, and girl.

About the data: Sysomos analyzed more than a billion tweets generated by over 20 million Twitter users in 2010. The previous June 2009 study analyzed 11.5 million Twitter accounts.