We know that Twitter has been growing astronomically. At the same time, Twitter is still an emerging service, growing beyond from its early adopter base to the Internet as a whole. Pew Research reports that from November 2010 to May 2011 overall Twitter use grew 5% and U.S. adult Internet users jumped from 8% to 13%.
Pew says that 95% of all Twitter users own a mobile phone and 54% of those users access Twitter via mobile. Black (25%) and Hispanic (19%) people tend to use Twitter more than white people (9%). Twitter use has seen a rise in all age demographics. The biggest jump has come in the 25- to 34-year-old age bracket, up 10% with 19% of people in that group now using Twitter.
In the November survey, the most likely age bracket to use Twitter was the 18 to 24 bracket, which comprised 16% of total users. That massive bump in users between 25 and 34 unseated the youngsters (18%) as the most likely to use the service. That could portend well for Twitter’s attempts to build an ad service on top of the platform as the 25 to 34 age group is one of the most influential when it comes to marketers and purchasing trends. Use by 35 to 44 year olds grew from 8% to 14%.
More men (14%) use Twitter than women (11%). Users tend to be college educated (16%) and urban (15%) or suburban (14%). Use was spread across income brackets with 12% to 15% in each group from less than $30,000 to $75,000 plus.
The report asks an interesting question: “Twitter, have you ever done this?” That is where 13% reported the affirmative. Yet, the answer to the question “did you use Twitter yesterday?” produces much lower results, with 4% of users saying that the did. That is double the amount of Internet users (2%) who said they “used Twitter yesterday” in November 2010.
That stat speaks to Twitter’s well-known problem with user retention. Whether there are 200 million or 300 million accounts is not relevant, but how many people actually use the service.
The study was a national U.S. survey of 2,277 adults age 18 and up done via telephone between April 22 and May 26, 2011. The margin of error is 3.7%.
