Is Twitter a giant hoax?

2 points by mtimjones ↗ HN
Let me start by saying I'm a big fan of Twitter, I use it every day. But something seems really fishy about the service. 44% of twitter accounts have never tweeted once. That's a very large percentage of their user base. I'm sure that some of those accounts are people that like to read others tweets, but almost half of the user-base sounds like an artificial inflation of a publicly traded stock.

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I can assure you as a former employee it is not a hoax.
Maybe you're over-estimating people's desire to draw attention to themselves?
I'm sure plenty of people, like me, signed up to see what the fuss was about, found it wasn't to my taste / usefulness and now hardly ever visit. However occasionally I end up logging when someone posts a link or someone on TV solicits some engagement - Eurosport, for instance, invite comment during live broadcast - I've had a couple of questions read out on air.

So, even though I have done those things I wouldn't describe myself as a Twitter "user".