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The percentage of Americans who are familiar with Twitter has surged from 5% in 2008 to 87% in 2010.
With the percentage of Americans who have access to the Internet stalled at roughly 85%, more people are
aware of Twitter than could possibly use the service. This extremely high level of awareness has likely been
driven by traditional media saturation, with many mainstream television, radio and print media outlets
prominently highlighting their Twitter accounts throughout the course of their programming.
Though the pace in Twitter’s growth in awareness has exceeded even that of Facebook (and the
two services are now equally well-known), roughly six times more Americans maintain a profile
page on Facebook than use Twitter. Server-based reporting methods indicate that the number of
user accounts in America is appreciably higher; however, the effects of multiple/duplicate accounts,
SPAM accounts and user churn likely explain this differential.
3. As such, Twitter has yet to articulate its value and usage benefits to the vast majority of
Americans.
Almost 50% of Americans 12+ maintain a profile on at least one social networking site, with the
vast majority using Facebook. Online social networking, therefore, is now a mainstream behavior in
American society. While sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have well-defined use cases and
benefits, Twitter has yet to establish a clear value proposition (even as a purely entertainment
service) for a majority of the current users of social networking sites and services in the United
States.
The percentage of Twitter users who are African-American currently stands at roughly 25%, which
is approximately double the percentage of African-Americans in the current U.S. population.
Indeed, many of the “trending topics” on Twitter on a typical day are reflective of African-American
culture, memes and topics. This segment of the U.S. population may be using Twitter more
conversationally than other Twitter users, though further study would be required to characterize
any differential in the nature of African-American Twitter usage.
5. One strategy to encourage Twitter adoption may be to emphasize the parallels between
status updates via Twitter and SMS messaging.
About 70% of Americans send and receive SMS messages via mobile phone, with 45% doing so
multiple times every day. If Twitter can successfully communicate relevant features and benefits to
this growing majority of Americans, it may be able to stimulate user growth among mainstream
Americans. Twitter itself may be thinking along these lines with its recent acquisition of SMS
technology provider Cloudhopper.
With many Americans joining Facebook mainly to find and connect with people they already know,
Twitter could benefit by tapping into those same motivations and behaviors by providing improved
tools for mainstream Americans to find their friends and family members on Twitter. Twitter has also
not emphasized its ability to create closed networks with private Twitter pages. Improved
awareness of those features, combined with improved tools to find people that prospective users
already know, may encourage usage among potential mainstream adopters.
7. The majority of Twitter users are “lurkers,” passively following and reading the updates of
others without contributing updates of their own.
However, most (70%) regular Twitter users do post status updates to some social networking
service (likely Facebook), so the issue has less to do with any reluctance to create content per se,
but more likely with a differential in how Twitter is used compared to Facebook. Twitter appears to
be functioning as more of a broadcast medium compared to Facebook and many other social
networking sites and services.
The percentage of Twitter users who follow brands is more than three times higher than similar
behavior expressed by social networking users in general. Significant percentages of regular Twitter
users report using the service not only to seek opinions about companies, products and services,
but to provide those opinions as well. Users of social media monitoring services should be aware
that these behaviors may be far more prevalent on Twitter than on other monitored sites and
services, which may introduce a bias into the data provided by social media monitoring platforms.
As such, Twitter’s most natural path to revenue may be to commercialize these interactions,
providing the “plumbing” for enterprise Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management) efforts.
While most Twitter users are ambivalent about television (and spend considerably more time on the
Internet), Television still wins as the medium most likely to be turned to in the event of a breaking
news story. Also, the top-trending television programs on Twitter in 2009 were far more likely to be
live events than were the most frequently searched programs on Google (and indeed, the most
frequently watched programs according to Nielsen.)
10. A significantly higher proportion of Twitter users update their social networking profiles -
and access Twitter - using mobile phones than the average user of other social networking
sites and services.
Twitter enjoys enormous popularity among users of iPhones and other smartphone devices. One in
five regular Twitter users updates the service via mobile phone several times per day, while one in
three do so at least daily.
2010 84%
2009 85%
2008 82%
2007 83%
2006 81%
2005 81%
2004 79%
2003 75%
2002 72%
2001 62%
2000 55%
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Broadband Dial-Up
100%
82% 84%
78% 76%
75% 68% 69%
60% 58%
48%48%
50%
37% 38%
28% 28%
25% 21% 20%
15% 13%
0%
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
48%
34%
24%
78% 77%
2008 2009 2010
64% 65%
63%
57%
54%
51%
44%
34% 35%
32% 31%
22%
17%
14% 13%
10%
4% 3% 3%
100
87%
75
50
26%
25
5%
0
2008 2009 2010
2010 7%
2009 2%
2008 *<1%
0%
0% 5% 10%
Base: Total Population 12+
At least once/day
At least once/month
15%
22%
At least once/week
30%
Twitter Facebook
100 100
87% 88%
75%
75 75
50%
50 50
26%
25 25
5%
0 0
2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010
Use Twitter 7%
Yes
7%
No
93%
Age Sex
55 +
7% 12 to 17
45 to 54 18%
12%
18 to 24 Men
11% Women 47%
35 to 44
19%
53%
25 to 34
33%
Hispanic
17%
Asian
3%
Other
5%
White
51%
Base: Monthly Twitter Users
40%
33%
30%
30%
23% 23%
20% 19%
17% 16%
13% 12%
10% 8%
2% 3%
0%
Adv. Degree Some Graduate Credits Four-Year College 1-3 Years of College High School/Less Refused
40%
30% 27%
23% 22%
20% 20%
20% 17%
15% 14%
13%
10% 11%
10% 8%
0% Over $100K Between $75K and $100K Between $50K and $75K Between $25K and $50K Under $25K Refused
32%
Better
18%
22%
Worse
24%
42%
Same
53%
4%
Refused
5%
19%
Are Among The First To Buy/Try New Products
10%
25%
Buy/Try New Products Before Others - Not First
12%
29%
Buy/Try New Products Same Time As Others
27%
16%
Buy/Try New Products After Others - Not Last
24%
11%
Usually The Last You Know To Try/Buy New Products
25%
Three or More
39%
One Two
35% 27%
Yes Yes
63% 34%
No No
37% 66%
About once/day
6%
Multiple Times/Week
11%
Several times/week
21%
Several times/day
Several times/week Several times/day
44%
13% 30%
Yes
70% Yes
No
No 55%
45%
30%
Never
3%
At Least Once/Month
4%
Several Times/Month
5%
Nearly Every Day
22%
At Least Once/week
15%
Several Times/Week
16%
Base: Monthly Twitter Users Who Post Status
Updates to Social Networking Web Sites
Copyright 2010, Edison Research/Arbitron Inc.
Status Updating Behaviors - Mobile
“How often do you update your status on social networking sites using a mobile phone?”
Never
29%
Several Times/Day
19%
At Least Once/Month
6%
At Least Once/week
6%
Several Times/Week
21%
Never
57%
Several Times/Week
3%
At Least Once/Week
9%
At Least Once/Month
6%
Yes
47%
No
53%
23%
iPhone
7%
49%
iPod
28%
40%
Other MP3 Player
23%
28%
BlackBerry
10%
9%
Kindle/eBook
3%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
73%
Internet
42%
13%
TV
37%
11%
Radio
14%
3%
Newspaper
5%
4:00
Internet
1:56
3:22
TV
3:25
2:41
Radio
2:05
:26
Newspaper
:28
0 1 2 3 4 5
Internet 46%
TV 42%
Radio 7%
Newspaper 4%
No
49% No
84%
Yes
Yes 16%
51%
No Effect
50%