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Maria Popova engagement report

@themarginalian - 839K followers on X

Measured over 80 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 30, 2026.

Engagement

Middle of its size range
Per follower
0.008%
of 839K followers
Per impression
0.625%
11K views on a typical post
Reach
1.30%
of its followers see a post
Typical post
68
interactions (median)
Saved
0.271%
30 bookmarks on a typical post
Posting rate
2.67/day
active 33% of days
Peak time
21:00 UTC
Thursday

A typical post picks up 68 interactions against 839K followers, an engagement rate of 0.008%. Measured over 80 original posts, its engagement rate beats 31% of 3,809 tracked accounts of a similar size, which puts it in the middle of its size range rather than at either end. Posts are seen about 11K times each, and 0.625% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 1.30% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 2.7 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 33% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 21:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 80 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 619 interactions, about 9.1x its own typical post.

Measured over 80 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 30, 2026. Recurring tag: #nationaldogday.

Compared with accounts its own size

Maria Popova's engagement rate beats 31% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,809 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 9 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 38% 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 0.008%, Maria Popova sits above the 10th percentile of the 36,852 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%
p750.435%
p902.10%
p99159.8%
Engagement rate as a share of followers, across the 36,852 accounts we have scanned enough to measure. The axis is logarithmic, because the top and bottom of this population are about 106,564 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 percentile0.435%
90th percentile2.10%
99th percentile159.8%

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 21:00 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.

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: 21:00 UTC.
0003060912151821
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 6%Busiest hour: 21:00 UTC
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
Engagement by hour posted, UTC
Hour (UTC)Vs author medianPosts
00:00 UTC-1%51K
01:00 UTC-2%52K
02:00 UTC-3%50K
03:00 UTC-4%54K
04:00 UTC-6%43K
05:00 UTC-4%42K
06:00 UTC-4%48K
07:00 UTC-5%52K
08:00 UTC-4%61K
09:00 UTC-3%70K
10:00 UTC-2%72K
11:00 UTC-3%79K
12:00 UTC-2%87K
13:00 UTC-3%95K
14:00 UTC-4%98K
15:00 UTC-2%101K
16:00 UTC-4%99K
17:00 UTC-2%91K
18:00 UTC-1%85K
19:00 UTC-1%80K
20:00 UTC-1%75K
21:00 UTC-1%66K
22:00 UTC-2%58K
23:00 UTC-2%52K
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: Thursday.
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 5%Busiest day: Thursday
Show engagement by day of week as a table
Engagement by day of week
DayVs author medianPosts
Sunday+4%232K
Monday0%290K
Tuesday-2%281K
Wednesday-1%252K
Thursday-2%245K
Friday-3%254K
Saturday+3%228K
See what moves engagement across the whole catalogWhat counts as a good engagement rate at this size

Best tweets

  • Jan 6, 20269.1x their median

    Across the abyss between one consciousness and another, between one frame of reference and another, we go on searching for an organizing principle to fathom the ultimate questions: What is life? What is death? What makes a body a person? What makes a planet a world? Over and over, we discover that it is all one question, that there might just be a single answer: love. Our love of knowledge. Our love of mystery. Our love of beauty transcending the vanity of ambition. Our love of truth prevailing over the howling hunger for power. Our love for each other — each of us a festival of particles and probabilities, a living question, a perishable miracle composed of chemistry and culture, of passion and chance. https://t.co/NQlN6dFG3h

    32626523581K viewsView on X
  • Aug 27, 20264.9x their median

    Your life will thank you for reading Jad Abumrad's tender, thoughtful recollection of Dolly's superpower, her dazzlingly integrated duality https://t.co/nqJtODBp5G

    275573119K viewsView on X
  • Aug 28, 20264.0x their median

    "Solitude is not chosen, any more than destiny is chosen. Solitude comes to us if we have within us the magic stone that attracts destiny." Hermann Hesse on solitude, the value of hardship, and how to find your destiny https://t.co/MWDfIb9fI7

    221433319K viewsView on X
  • Aug 27, 20263.7x their median

    "1. Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom." 10 rules of writing (which apply to all creative work) from one of the finest writers of our time https://t.co/3jrGv2wAs4

    226221123K viewsView on X
  • Aug 21, 20262.8x their median

    Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on the dignity of neediness and the intelligence of emotions https://t.co/R2ocArfHAF

    156341220K viewsView on X
  • Aug 28, 20262.6x their median

    The four desires driving all human behavior – Bertrand Russell's magnificent Nobel Prize acceptance speech https://t.co/VQVUlNwYA8

    140313223K viewsView on X
  • Aug 20, 20262.6x their median

    Not often — a handful of times in a lifetime, if you are lucky — you come upon a work of thought and feeling — a book, a painting, a song — that becomes a fountain to which you return again and again, and which returns you to your life refreshed each time. https://t.co/QXD23yZbtO

    156190113K viewsView on X
  • Aug 21, 20262.3x their median

    For an act of resistance to the tyranny of algorithms, try the Marginalian newsletter — undistracted notes on the search for meaning through art, science, philosophy, poetry, and various other tendrils of wonder. For 20 years, it has remained a one-woman labor of love — free, ad-free, AI-free, and fully human: https://t.co/kJdb2Rs2sV

    112431110K viewsView on X
  • Aug 20, 20262.2x their median

    “What is happiness but growth in peace.” May Sarton's stunning poem about being at home in yourself https://t.co/aUlBdg5moI

    127231013K viewsView on X
  • Aug 29, 20262.1x their median

    This Is a Poem That Heals Fish – an almost unbearably wonderful French picture-book (but really work of philosophy) about how poetry works its magic https://t.co/sx0fP9aDax

    123192014K 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.

Recurring topics

#nationaldogday

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 68 interactions against 839K followers, an engagement rate of 0.008%. Measured over 80 original posts, its engagement rate beats 31% of 3,809 tracked accounts of a similar size, which puts it in the middle of its size range rather than at either end. Posts are seen about 11K times each, and 0.625% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 1.30% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 2.7 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 33% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 21:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 80 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 619 interactions, about 9.1x its own typical post.

What is Maria Popova's engagement rate on X?
Maria Popova (@themarginalian) has an engagement rate of 0.008%, based on the median interactions across 80 original posts from the last 30 days against 839,301 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
Is that a good engagement rate?
At 0.008%, Maria Popova sits above the 10th percentile of the 36,852 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 @themarginalian have real engagement?
Its engagement rate beats 31% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,809 accounts), which puts it in the middle of its size range 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 @themarginalian post?
Most posts go out around 21:00 UTC, and Thursday is its busiest day, at roughly 2.67 posts per day across the measured window.

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