Sure, it makes for dramatic charts to measure growth by posts. But posts can just as easily be a measure added noise. More important to Twitter's longterm relevance are engaged, active, regular users over time.

A little quick math based on this article on Twitter growth which would have us all believing Twitter is taking over the world and changing the way everyone does everything.

Twitter has 93MM users worldwide. That’s a sizeable number. Probably the equivalent of several nations for those prone to enjoying irrelevant hyperbolic comparisons.

Twitter struggles with an 83% dormancy rate in its open accounts. Hm, that could be an issue couldn’t it?

That means Twitter in reality has +/- 16MM regular, active, engaged users worldwide.

If Sysmos (quoted in the original article being referenced here) is right, and North America makes up 50% of Twitter’s user base, that means there are about 8MM active Twitter users in North America.

If  the Comscore study is right and that figure is closer to 27%, then it’s only 4.32MM users. The North American  population is 344MM, just for a measuring rod to determine ubiquity (which in my mind is a prerequisite of lofty claims to seismic cultural change).

Looked at as part of the North American population, that means Twitter – in its argulably most mature market, with few well-known competitors, zero cost or barriers to entry by consumers (with Internet access), and after two years of incredible hype and awareness – has an engaged userbase of approx. 2.3% (on the high end) or 1.26% (on the low end) of the North American population. This is not insignificant, mind you, but neither is it paradigm-shifting ubiquity – especially for something that is inherently ‘free’ insofar as user adoption goes.

This number further assumes that 100% of all active users are 1) not spammers, 2) not follower-collectors, celebrities, government folks or corporate accounts who use it for broadcast and marketing and 3) that of the often hundreds of follows heavy Twitter users maintain, there is even remote chance of them seeing much of any individual follow’s output.

If, after two years of over-the-top media hype across one of the most rapid-fire and advanced communications networks in the world, only 2% of the population has opted to use Twitter regularly in North America – a country whose cell phone bills speak reams about its desire for connectivity – then we are not looking at an overnight revolution but a slow, drift. And Twitter is not a powerhouse, but a fringe tool.

It’s also very possible that the 22% North American growth rate (measured in sign-ups, mind you) is cannibalized by the 83% dormancy rate and that Twitter’s engaged user base in North America is not really growing at all – just cycling through usernames.

Admittedly, ’100% growth’ and ’93MM users’ are nice statements for 140 character tweets. Looking a little deeper though, is revealing.

Reading a headline like “Twitter achieves 100% growth in one year” could easily stir up executives to rush into social media without considering the context of both the headline and their own constituencies. What, after all, is the makeup of that 2% of the population that are active Twitter users in North America? More importantly, what proportion of those subsets are actually constituencies your business stands to benefit from engaging with?

Were I considering the role of Twitter in my business efforts, I  would gauge my efforts, resources and expectations accordingly. That is not to say exclude Twitter, but it is to say have realistic and proportionate plans for it. I would also add that while the media frenzy creates a sense of urgency around any new technology, in fact, a sense of reasoned thought is more likely to yield beneficial results.

Headlines often get our attention but they are not always worth our attention.