Yesterday headlines were made as Twitter announced its new “Moments” feature, which has been about a year in the making and aims to re-engage previous Twitter users and hopefully lure non-users.

CivicScience knows that about 10% of 88,000+ U.S. folks polled in the past 18 months say they have abandoned use of Twitter:

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One of the challenges for many social media sites like Twitter is to gain a well-rounded understanding of their users (and in this case, lapsed users) that go beyond those user profiles and what they opt to post, share, follow, favorite, etc. We’ve covered this before, the issue of “social media personas” — in a recent post about the political skew of Facebook posts and last year in an AdAge piece about Twitter’s users not being representative of the total consumer voice. What users post online most likely only tells part of their total story.

That’s where CivicScience can be hugely helpful in providing a more well-rounded, holistic view of these users. So what does our platform know about Twitter’s lapsed users? Here are a handful of tidbits that we pulled out in a few minutes this morning…

Twitter’s lapsed users:

  • They lean younger: They’re more likely than average to be under age 35; they are 32% more likely to not have graduated from high school yet; and they are 35% more likely to still live with mom and dad.
  • They are 13% more likely to be female. (Split is 43% male and 57% female)
  • They are also 148% more likely to have abandoned use of Snapchat and 209% more likely to have abandoned use of Instagram too.
  • They go to the movies less frequently than active Twitter users.
  • They aren’t as addicted to their digital devices as active Twitter users (but still higher than average).
  • They are 65% more likely to say they aren’t an organ donor yet but intend to become one soon.
  • When they “splurge” on themselves, they are 74% more likely to buy event tickets.
  • Like the active Twitter users, they are much more likely to say that TV shows are a passion.
  • They are over 33% more likely to be “second screening” while watching TV, but not necessarily posting about the show.
  • They are not as likely as active Twitter users to enjoy telling others about new brands or technology.

And here’s something that advertisers and Twitter’s sales team should care about, which are the brand affinities and sentiments of these lapsed users:

  • When it comes to wireless carriers they are much more likely (+60% or higher) than average to use Boost Mobile or Metro PCS.
  • They are significantly more likely than average (+164%) and than active Twitter users to “love” Coach handbags and accessories.
  • They are 81% more likely than average to “love” shopping at Dollar Tree.
  • They like to eat at SONIC, but not at much as active Twitter users, and they are also more likely to say they don’t like to eat there.

We’ve got tons more in our platform, but that starts to give you a sense of overall the user group that might be drawn back through the Moments offering. They’re young, they’re dabblers, they’re device and content oriented (but not necessarily obsessed), and they like a combination of economic and aspirational brands.

We’ll be adding a poll today asking people what they think of Twitter’s Moments and tracking that, so stay tuned.