Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Twitterpated: More and More Mobile Americans Take to Tweeting

LM Comment: Provides a decent sense of Twitter and where its usage fits in today's media environment. Clearly this is not yet a medium for connecting with the casino demographic, but with the way things can change so rapidly it’s worth keeping any eye on.

February 12, 2009: from Pew Research Center -- In the past three years, developments in social networking and Internet applications have begun providing Internet users with more opportunities for sharing short updates about themselves, their lives, and their whereabouts online. Users may post messages about their status, their moods, their location and other tidbits on social networks and blogging sites, or on applications for sending out short messages to networks of friends like Twitter, Yammer and others.

As of December 2008, 11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others. Just a few weeks earlier, in November 2008, 9% of Internet users used Twitter or updated their status online and in May 2008, 6% of Internet users responded yes to a slightly different question, where users were asked if they used "Twitter or another ‘microblogging' service to share updates about themselves or to see updates about others."

Of the standalone applications that enable short messaging to a network of friends, Twitter is the most well known. First made available to those online in August 2006, Twitter allows users to send messages, known as "tweets" from a computer or a mobile device like a mobile phone, Blackberry or iPhone. Users of the service are asked to post messages of no more than 140 characters and those messages are delivered to others who have signed up to receive them such as family, friends or colleagues.

Twitter and similar services have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one-in-five (19%) online adults ages 18 to 24 have ever used Twitter and its ilk, as have 20% of online adults ages 25 to 34. Use of these services drops off steadily after age 35 with 10% of 35-to-44 year-olds and 5% of those ages 45 to 54 using Twitter. The decline is even more stark among older Internet users; 4% of 55-to-64 year-olds and 2% of those age 65 and older use Twitter.

The use of Twitter is highly intertwined with the use of other social media; both blogging and social network use increase the likelihood that an individual also uses Twitter. Adults who use online social networks are much more likely to say that they have used Twitter or some other service to update their status and read the status updates of others. Nearly one quarter (23%) of social network users say they have ever Twittered or used a similar service. In comparison, just 4% of those who do not use social networks have ever used Twitter or updated their status online.

As noted above, Twitter users are overwhelmingly young. However, unlike the majority of other applications with a similarly large percentage of youth, Twitter use is not dominated by the youngest of young adults. Indeed, the median age of a Twitter user is 31. In comparison, the median age of a MySpace user is 27, Facebook user is 26 and LinkedIn user is 40.

Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/dc96tf

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