Portrait of a Twitter tweeter
p2pnet news view P2P:- What’s a ’status update service’?
And if you know what it is, do you use one?
(Where do they get these phrases? Is there some kind of agency out there whose minions spend their days dreaming them up?)
As you’ve already figured out from the chart on the right, Twitter is, or offers (?), a ’status update service’ and according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, “Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others.”
And this represents a significant increase over surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, “when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service”.
Put another way, one in five internet users are now on Twitter or another ’status update service,’ says Pew.
Twitter doesn’t rival mainstream online communications activities, “but internet users are adopting status updates at a healthy clip,” it says.
And age is a “strong, independent predictor for use of Twitter and other status updating services,” says the study, going on:
” Internet users age 18-44 report rapid uptake of Twitter over the last nine months, whereas internet users ages 45 and older report slower adoption rates. For example, 37% of internet users age 18-24 use Twitter or another service, up from 19% in December 2008.
“The median age for Facebook is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.
“The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year.4 The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.”
And, “Young people flock to Twitter,” says Pew, stating:
“Internet users age 18-44 report rapid uptake of Twitter over the last nine months, whereas internet users ages 45 and older report slower adoption rates. For example, 37% of internet users age 18-24 use Twitter or another service, up from 19% in December 2008.”
Not only but also, Twitter has caught the eye(s) of other researchers, ie:
- comScore`s continuous surveys of internet users and real-time network data capture confirm our findings: Twitter traffic exploded over the last year, going from about 2 million unique visitors per month in December 2008 to over 17 million in May 2009.5
- Harvard Business School researchers analyzed a random sample of 300,000 Twitter accounts and found that “the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets.”6
- Sysomos analyzed 11.5 million Twitter accounts and found that most people post just once per day (and one in five have never posted).78
But, “It will probably become more difficult to track status updating as an independent activity as social network updates feed into Twitter and vice versa,”laments Pew, adding:
“For now, it is clear that a ’social segment’ of internet users is flocking to both social network sites and status update services. This segment is likely to grow as ever more internet users adopt mobile devices as a primary means of going online.”
Pew - Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009, October, 2009
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October 23rd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Of course these statistics only apply to those who are so revealing about themselves that they would list their age, ethnicity, education and income. It leaves out those intelligent enough not to.
You will also note that I have not said whether or not I tweet, or book my face. Again…