If someone who signs up for a Twitter account but then fails to ever launch a single tweet, can we call said person a Twitter “user”? Or is there some other name for the 44% of all Twitter account holders who have never tweeted, perhaps “The Untweeted,” à la Game of Thrones or “Career Lurkers”?

In any case, a new report says that almost half of all the 974 million accounts on Twitter have never ever sent a tweet. Not about yesterday’s lunch, no musings on the pitch and frequency of the cat’s meowing at the bird outside the window, not even “how does this thing work?”

The report (via the Wall Street Journal) comes from Twopcharts, a site that monitors Twitter account activity, but that number hasn’t been confirmed by Twitter itself. A spokesperson said simply that the company doesn’t comment on third-party data.

It’s unclear if these are ghost accounts, abandoned by their owners before they were even given a chance to breathe life into the social world, or maybe the kind of person like that friend of yours who simply follows and lurks in order to stay abreast of current events. Twopcharts can only track when an account tweets its own message or retweets one.

Of course, Twitter would prefer its users to be tweeting, because that’s how it earns ad revenue. And the more you use Twitter, the thinking goes, the more likely you are to keep using it in the future.

More importantly, if you’ve never tweeted, then you’ll never have to feel like you’re standing in a huge, roiling crowd and shouting at the top of your lungs, but no on can hear you.

Report: 44% of Twitter Accounts Have Never Sent a Tweet [Wall Street Journal]

You can follow MBQ on Twitter where she has actually tweeted, at least once or twice by now: @marybethquirk

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.