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Scientific American engagement report

@sciam - 4.3M followers on X

Measured over 129 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 31, 2026.

Engagement

Bottom quarter for its size
Per follower
0.001%
of 4.3M followers
Per impression
0.284%
18K views on a typical post
Reach
0.42%
of its followers see a post
Typical post
51
interactions (median)
Saved
0.044%
8 bookmarks on a typical post
Posting rate
4.4/day
active 67% of days
Peak time
19:00 UTC
Wednesday

A typical post picks up 51 interactions against 4.3M followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 129 original posts, its engagement rate beats 20% of 3,758 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 18K times each, and 0.284% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.423% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 4.4 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 67% of days. Most posts go out around 19:00 UTC, and Wednesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 129 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 1.7K interactions, about 33x its own typical post.

Measured over 129 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 31, 2026.

Compared with accounts its own size

Scientific American's engagement rate beats 20% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,758 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 10 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 26% 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%, Scientific American sits below the 10th percentile of the 36,521 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.012%.

p100.002%
p250.012%
p50 (median)0.08%
p750.434%
p902.10%
p99160.7%
Engagement rate as a share of followers, across the 36,521 accounts we have scanned enough to measure. The axis is logarithmic, because the top and bottom of this population are about 107,166 times apart and a linear axis would flatten everything below the median into a single point.
Show the percentile table
Engagement rate percentiles
PercentileEngagement rate
10th percentile0.002%
25th percentile0.012%
50th percentile0.08%
75th percentile0.434%
90th percentile2.10%
99th percentile160.7%

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 19:00 UTC, and Wednesday 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.

Engagement by hour posted, UTCTwenty-four bars, one per UTC hour. Each bar shows how posts published in that hour compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest hour: 19:00 UTC.
0003060912151821
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 6%Busiest hour: 19:00 UTC
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
Engagement by hour posted, UTC
Hour (UTC)Vs author medianPosts
00:00 UTC-1%50K
01:00 UTC-2%51K
02:00 UTC-3%50K
03:00 UTC-4%53K
04:00 UTC-6%43K
05:00 UTC-4%42K
06:00 UTC-4%48K
07:00 UTC-5%52K
08:00 UTC-4%60K
09:00 UTC-3%69K
10:00 UTC-2%72K
11:00 UTC-3%78K
12:00 UTC-2%86K
13:00 UTC-2%94K
14:00 UTC-4%97K
15:00 UTC-2%100K
16:00 UTC-3%97K
17:00 UTC-2%90K
18:00 UTC-1%84K
19:00 UTC-2%79K
20:00 UTC-1%74K
21:00 UTC-1%66K
22:00 UTC-2%57K
23:00 UTC-2%51K
Engagement by day of weekSeven bars, one per weekday, Sunday first. Each bar shows how posts published on that day compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest day: Wednesday.
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 5%Busiest day: Wednesday
Show engagement by day of week as a table
Engagement by day of week
DayVs author medianPosts
Sunday+4%230K
Monday0%286K
Tuesday-2%276K
Wednesday-1%251K
Thursday-1%244K
Friday-3%252K
Saturday+3%227K
See what moves engagement across the whole catalogWhat counts as a good engagement rate at this size

Best tweets

  • Aug 24, 202633x their median

    Earth's oceans are reaching perilous new temperatures—on August 22, scientists recorded the hottest ever temperature. Experts explain how it is only going to get worse: https://t.co/ss9wK3Cn2l

    969600464660K viewsView on X
  • Aug 25, 202628x their median

    Country music legend Dolly Parton, who died today at 81, donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2020 to help fund an early stage trial of the Moderna COVID vaccine. She received her first dose in 2021 and urged others to do the same. https://t.co/fGgIYZPabc

    1.1K310151254K viewsView on X
  • Aug 20, 202618x their median

    Europe is on fire. It is going to get so, so much worse. https://t.co/iCySAZqarN

    4962751222484K viewsView on X
  • Aug 10, 202618x their median

    The president called for the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) combined vaccine to be split into separate shots, despite decades of research showing the MMR is safe and effective https://t.co/DsrCXNDcPB

    51822911141117K viewsView on X
  • Aug 21, 202614x their median

    The mathematical reality of a $40 trillion national debt is unfathomable. https://t.co/AxfGJl1npG

    446188483575K viewsView on X
  • Aug 26, 202611x their median

    The U.S. just approved a new breakthrough drug for late-stage pancreatic cancer that significantly extends the lives of people with the disease—considered one of the most intractable and difficult to treat forms of cancer https://t.co/U5UVVXrMME

    4421246937K viewsView on X
  • Aug 19, 20267.1x their median

    How does psilocybin alter consciousness to create a profound sense of ‘oneness’? A new study found a "hidden order" in brain activity, where networks responsible for the self and the world integrated. https://t.co/kl7FF5rfL9

    2776612524K viewsView on X
  • Aug 17, 20266.2x their median

    "We’ve got the world’s biggest economy, in my view, not because of real estate developers but because of science and decades and decades of the federal government investing in research and education"—@senmarkkelly https://t.co/mGOnvaIL65

    2336912130K viewsView on X
  • Aug 22, 20266.1x their median

    Traumatic memories are stored in the brain differently from other life events, changing our experience of these memories https://t.co/9DXcavXJA3

    234628634K viewsView on X
  • Aug 19, 20265.5x their median

    A combined drug made by pharma giants Merck and Moderna uses mRNA technology—the same tech as the COVID vaccines—to target a deadly and common form of skin cancer https://t.co/QpUqjT2hsD

    206640927K viewsView on X

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.

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Reading these numbers

A typical post picks up 51 interactions against 4.3M followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 129 original posts, its engagement rate beats 20% of 3,758 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 18K times each, and 0.284% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.423% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 4.4 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on roughly 67% of days. Most posts go out around 19:00 UTC, and Wednesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 129 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 1.7K interactions, about 33x its own typical post.

What is Scientific American's engagement rate on X?
Scientific American (@sciam) has an engagement rate of 0.001%, based on the median interactions across 129 original posts from the last 30 days against 4,251,979 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
Is that a good engagement rate?
At 0.001%, Scientific American sits below the 10th percentile of the 36,521 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 @sciam have real engagement?
Its engagement rate beats 20% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,758 accounts), which puts it in the bottom quarter 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 @sciam post?
Most posts go out around 19:00 UTC, and Wednesday is its busiest day, at roughly 4.4 posts per day across the measured window.

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