Lies, Damn Lies and Twitter Statistics

This post caught my eye while looking at Techmeme this am:

Pedestrians repeatedly thumbing their cell phones could be playing the latest mobile game, but it's just as likely they're microblogging addicts updating their Twitter accounts. Twitter's short-form service makes it ideal for two-sentence contributions from mobile phones, IM services, browsers, and desktop apps. Here are a few ultra-convenient third-party Twitter-updating apps.

The article goes on to do a good service to readers and list all the 3rd party apps that Twitterers can use to get their fix in our converged world, but the pedan...I mean analytical part of me got very grumpy at the "just as likely" bit above.

The total number of Twitterers is about 1 million globally, of which a (significant?) minority are on mobile phones - say 500,000.

The number of people with mobile phones is far far greater - in the US and EU combined (let us assume ALL Twitterers are in those areas) there are about 500m phones knocking about. Even assuming only 10% are playing games etc, thats still 50m.

Doing the maths, 500,000 / 50m = 1%

So in fact, the correct statement is that its c 1% likely that they are microblogging addicts.......

I feel better now