Beyond Twitter’s “One Million Voices”

It’s always nice to hear how well mainstream social networks and social utility tools, like Twitter, are doing. Seems like every time a network, like LinkedIn or Facebook, hits a specific high number in their community, it’s “big news” in the technology and digital marketing arena. And now Twitter is reporting its active users has hit the Big 1M.

While I find that interesting and am very happy for Twitter, I often wonder if it is ever possible to determine the scale or size of Twitter’s active NON-users. What I am refering to are the countless many who use Twitter all the time but never once log in because they’ve never, EVER opened up a Twitter account (most of these folks never intend to, either).

Still, these non-official users use Twitter all the time. They read Twitter feeds of brands or people they know. They follow the news and keep up with celebrities. And friends and family members keep tabs on each other without ever once logging in or creating an account. I recently heard a female speaker tell an audience the other day that if her husband wants to know what she is up to, he simply types in her complete Twitter URL and reads her latest tweets. And no, he doesn’t have a Twitter account and yeah, he’s got zero interest at all in creating one.

Just interesting to know that active NON-users are out there, too. The 100 million active user mark can only clearly define folks who log in regularly to their Twitter accounts. But based on the expansiveness of active NON-users, it would appear to me that the overall Twitter community of users at large is much, much larger than 100 million.

Thoughts, as always, are welcome.

BTW, for those interested in learning more about Twitter’s 1M milestone, please see the company’s blog post entitled “One Million Voices.”