Twitter’s CEO spoke last night at OpenCoSF’s kickoff reception, which was held at 72 Townsend Street in San Francisco to a full house.

And he dispelled what he said was the biggest misconception people have about Twitter.

If you have friends that are shy about trying Twitter because they feel like they really don’t have anything to share with the world, tell them Dick Costolo, Twitter’s CEO, says they’re in good company: 40% of people with Twitter accounts don’t tweet.

Sharing this statistic as he was interviewed on stage by John Battelle, co-founder of OpenCoSF, Costolo said that the biggest misconception people have about Twitter is that participating on Twitter means one must tweet.

But 40% of Twitter users are on there purely to follow others. They may use it to gain access to their favorite celebrities and politicians or to catch the latest breaking news, but they don’t tweet.

Does this surprise you?

This also calls into question the validity of services claiming to sort out fake versus real followers, like the newly popular Fakers by Status People. They deem followers as fake when they have “few or no followers and few or no tweets. But in contrast they tend to follow a lot of other accounts.”

But according to Costolo, that’s EXACTLY what 40% of Twitter accounts do. Hmm.

So maybe stringing up some of those “fakers” was a bit premature?

(Incorrect street sign image from Shutterstock)