Twitter has hardly reached a saturation point, according to new data from Pew, which found 8 percent of adult Internet users to be tweeting, and only 2 percent of those doing so daily.
Who's on Twitter? Eight percent of American adult Internet users, and
particularly young adults, minorities and people living in cities, according to
Dec. 9 report from the Pew Research
Center. Of those users, 2 percent
said they visit the site on a daily basis.
Diverting from previous surveys, in which Twitter was lumped in "another
service" for sharing updates or seeing updates about others, the Pew
researchers decided to get specific and ask directly: "Do you use Twitter?"
What they found was that Twitter users make up 10 percent of all female
Internet users, versus 7 percent of Internet-using men. Tweeting is also more
popular with those in the 18-29 age category-14 percent, versus 7 percent of 30
to 49 year olds, the next most popular category. Also, of adult Internet users,
18 percent of Hispanics are on Twitter-versus 13 percent of "non-Hispanic black"
adults and 5 percent of non-Hispanic white adults-and more have a college education
than don't.
Joining forces with Princeton Survey Research Associates International,
which performed weekly surveys in October, it was discovered that Twitter users
are evenly split between those who check the site on a daily business and those
who occasionally check in.
What's everyone tweeting about? The researchers broke down types of tweets
into nine content categories, and found that the typical user posts four of the
nine types. Overall, 72 percent of Twitter users said they post updates related
to their personal lives and interests, while 62 percent said they post about
their activities, interests and work life. A helpful 55 percent tweet about news
items-12 do this at least once a day-while 54 percent instead go in for the
humorous/philosophical observation.
Just over half of Twitter users retweet posts-18 percent of them on a daily basis-and
send direct message. Forty percent share photos, 28 percent share videos, and
24 percent let others in on their whereabouts.
The Centers for Disease Control have found the number of Americans without
a home landline to be increasing-in March 2009, 25.4 percent of adults
relied entirely on a wireless phone. Pew notes that its questions were asked
via a national telephone survey that combined landline and cellular numbers.
Earlier this year, the Pew Research
Center's Internet and American Life
Project answered the question of who's texting with the answer: teenage
girls. On average, 14- to 17-year-old girls are sending more than 100 text
messages a day, while boys average 20 texts.
On the upside, teens are using their mobile phones to share photos and
stories, to arrange get-togethers and to micro-coordinate their schedules; on
the downside, they are using them to cheat on tests, wriggle around rules and
fire off sexts.
"Understanding how youth use mobile phones is vital to creating
effective policy based on the reality of how the technology is used,"
stated the report. "It is also important to understand how
telecommunications company policies and pricing affect how teens and parents
use their phones," the report stated.
Twitter first launched July 15,
2006, according to Pew, and reportedly has tens of millions of
users worldwide.
Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.
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