Dark Reading engagement report
@DarkReading - 357K followers on X
Measured over 40 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 2, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 5 interactions against 357K followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 40 original posts, its engagement rate beats 9% of 6,874 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 7.2K times each, and 0.069% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 2.03% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.3 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 30% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 17:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 40 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 69 interactions, about 14x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #drglobal, #cybersecurity, #darkreading.
Measured over 40 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 2, 2026. Recurring tags: #drglobal, #cybersecurity, #darkreading.
Compared with accounts its own size
Dark Reading's engagement rate beats 9% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (6,874 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 8 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.
On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 5% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.001%, Dark Reading sits below the 10th percentile of the 66,128 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.016%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.002% |
| 25th percentile | 0.016% |
| 50th percentile | 0.1% |
| 75th percentile | 0.499% |
| 90th percentile | 2.09% |
| 99th percentile | 119.9% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 17:00 UTC, and Thursday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 89K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 90K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 88K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 94K |
| 04:00 UTC | -5% | 76K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 75K |
| 06:00 UTC | -5% | 86K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 93K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 108K |
| 09:00 UTC | -4% | 124K |
| 10:00 UTC | -3% | 129K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 141K |
| 12:00 UTC | -3% | 154K |
| 13:00 UTC | -3% | 167K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 173K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 176K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 171K |
| 17:00 UTC | -3% | 159K |
| 18:00 UTC | -2% | 149K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 141K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 131K |
| 21:00 UTC | 0% | 116K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 100K |
| 23:00 UTC | -1% | 90K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +5% | 393K |
| Monday | +1% | 483K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 520K |
| Wednesday | -3% | 472K |
| Thursday | -2% | 430K |
| Friday | -3% | 447K |
| Saturday | +2% | 393K |
Formats this account uses
Its own posting mix on the left, and what each of those formats does across every account we track on the right. Only formats where the effect clears our publish test appear here, so an empty row is a format we could not measure rather than one that does nothing.
| Format | This account | Catalog effect | 95% interval | Accounts behind it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image or video | 0% of posts | +111% | +108% to +115% | 34K |
| Outbound link | 100% of posts | -41% | -42% to -40% | 32K |
| Typical length | - | -3% | -3% to -2% | 54K |
- 0% of this account's sampled posts carry an image or video. Across the catalog, posts with an image or video run 111% above the same accounts' other posts.
- 100% of its posts carry a link off X. Across the catalog, posts with an outbound link run 41% below the same accounts' other posts, so a large share of this account's output sits in the weakest bucket we measure.
- Its average post runs 154 characters, which falls in the 80 - 180 characters band. Across the catalog, posts of 80 to 180 characters run 3% below the same accounts' other posts.
These are catalog-wide differences applied to this account's own posting mix, not a measurement of how each format performs for this account specifically. We keep one median per account, not one per format per account, so the second thing is not something this data can tell you.
Best tweets
- Aug 24, 202614x their median
Following an increasing number of malicious campaigns using agentic skills, OWASP releases its top-10 list of agentic skills risks and a universal skills format. "Without the knowledge of what risks could exist with skills, you're kind of operating blind," says security practitioner Omar Turner. https://t.co/djiUj672cQ
- Aug 21, 202611x their median
OWASP Flags Top AI Skill Risks in New Security Blueprint: https://t.co/pyEByyY71s by Robert Lemos
- May 26, 20265.0x their median
Tim Wilson, co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Dark Reading, passed away five years ago in November. As Dark Reading enters its third decade, we pause to celebrate and honor Wilson's instrumental role in building and elevating the media site. Read the full story here: https://t.co/xGYlTVas8q #DarkReading20 @InformaTTGT
- Aug 28, 20263.6x their median
You Need Cyber Deception for OT: https://t.co/HLMmEeEMG3 Commentary by Scott Hawk, VP & CISO, Velaspan
- Aug 28, 20263.6x their median
Chinese Routers Sold Worldwide Contain Backdoors: https://t.co/997C91Zw2r by Nate Nelson
- Aug 31, 20262.8x their median
AI Model Rules Are Not Security Controls: https://t.co/b72Gjglo0Q Commentary by Jacob Krell, Senior Director: Secure AI Solutions & Cybersecurity, Suzu Labs
- Aug 24, 20262.6x their median
The Vulnerability Gap: Why Discovery Is Outrunning Repair https://t.co/s67QnMo2kn Commentary by Christopher Robinson, Chief Security Architect, Open Source Security Foundation
- Sep 1, 20262.4x their median
Anthropic Users Hit by Infostealer Attacks, Session Thefts: https://t.co/6cYlJLdLmm by Jai Vijayan
- Aug 20, 20262.4x their median
The 'Industrial Accidents' Behind Rogue AI Agent Attacks - and the Sandbox Failures Exposed https://t.co/gBXiW0pxCl A #BlackHat NewsDesk interview #darkreading #cybersecurity
- Sep 1, 20262.2x their median
'TerminalFix' Campaign Weaponizes PowerShell for Enterprise Attacks: https://t.co/3MHw0NB1Hy by Alexander Culafi
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
Recurring topics
The most frequent hashtags in the sampled posts. They describe what this account writes about; they are not a performance signal, and the catalog-wide breakdown on the hub shows how little hashtag count moves.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 5 interactions against 357K followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 40 original posts, its engagement rate beats 9% of 6,874 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 7.2K times each, and 0.069% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 2.03% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.3 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 30% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 17:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 40 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 69 interactions, about 14x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #drglobal, #cybersecurity, #darkreading.
- What is Dark Reading's engagement rate on X?
- Dark Reading (@DarkReading) has an engagement rate of 0.001%, based on the median interactions across 40 original posts from the last 30 days against 356,987 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.001%, Dark Reading sits below the 10th percentile of the 66,128 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @DarkReading have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 9% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (6,874 accounts), which puts it in the bottom 10% for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
- When does @DarkReading post?
- Most posts go out around 17:00 UTC, and Thursday is its busiest day, at roughly 1.33 posts per day across the measured window.