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"24% of Tweets are created by automated bots, not humans, according to a recent study.  Meanwhile, it was found that 5% of Twitter accounts generate 75% of Tweets.\nThe \"Inside Twitter\" study, conducted last month by Sysomos, surprised researchers when they discovered that such a small number of accounts were generating so much of Twitter's content.  Now, they've published in-depth data looking more closely at that highly-active 5% of the userbase.  \nThe findings of the report are intriguing.  For instance, many of these most active users are actually automated:\nWe found that 32% of all tweets made by the most active Twitter users were generated by machine bots that posted more than 150 tweets/day. The actual percentage of machine-generated tweets among the most active users is probably higher than 32% because there many bots that update less than 150 times/day.\nBased on its previous \"Inside Twitter\" study and this most recent report, Sysomos concludes that in total, 24% of Tweets are created by bots.\nNot All Bots are Spam\nHowever, that's not to say that 24% of Tweets are spam; far from it.\nSysomos is quick to point out that many of these high volume, automated accounts provide useful data, like the top stories on social news site Digg, or the most recent popular bookmarks on Delicious.  Accounts like @CombatSI, which provides realtime updates from the virtual world of Second Life, generate over 2,000 updates per day.  Another highly active automated account, @dogbook, provides updates on what dogs are doing via the Dogbook Facebook app.  \nIn other words: just because Tweeting isn't solely a human pursuit, that doesn't mean bots are all spammers.\nActive Twitter Users: More Fascinating Stats\nWhile the data about bots and \"Twitter addicts\" is perhaps the most accessible, it's well worth digging into the report to absorb some of its nuances.  In the blog post about the findings, Sysomos quotes these key facts:\n\n\u2014Among the most active Twitter users with more than 50,000 followers, we find singer Tyrese (@tyrese4real), actress Alyssa Milano (@alyssa_milano), celebrity Tila Tequila (@officialtila), tv host Jonathan Ross (@wossy) and evangelist Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki).\n\u201460.6% of the most active Twitter users live in the United States, while 6.9% are located in the U.K, 4.7% in Japan, and 4.3% in Canada.\n\u2014The split between genders among the most active Twitter users is fairly balanced with 54% male, 46% female.\n\u201488% of the most active Twitter users have never missed a day without making at least one update, while another 2.1% have only been inactive for one day.\n\u201448% have more than 100 followers, compared with 6.3% for overall Twitter users.\n\u201433.7% of the most active Twitter users have joined Twitter this year, compared with 72.5% of overall Twitter users who have signed up this year\n\u2014The most popular keywords within bios of active users are Internet marketing, music lover, Web designer, video games, and husband/father.\n\nThe full \"Inside Twitter\" report is available as a PDF [warning: PDF link].\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/08/06/twitter-bots/>