Who Really Uses Twitter, and How?

The Pew Research Center has released the findings (PDF) of their first study focused exclusively on Twitter. According to the report, Twitter is still a niche product used by 8% of U.S. Internet users.

The platform’s relevance as a marketing tool may depend on your audience — it is relatively popular with urban and minority teens, but less popular among 30-something white, non-hispanics living in the suburbs. But with a reported 370,000 new users signing up daily, it could be just a matter of time before your customers catch on.

According to the report, some of the demographic groups who demonstrate relatively high levels of Twitter use include:

• Young adults: Internet users ages 18-29 are significantly more likely to use Twitter than older adults.
• African-Americans and Latinos: Minority Internet users are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as are white Internet users.
• Urbanites: Urban residents are roughly twice as likely to use Twitter as rural dwellers.

Women and the college-educated are also slightly more likely than average to use the platform.

Overall, observations related to users’ personal or professional lives are the most popular types of updates, while location-based tweets and links to videos are the least commonly mentioned:

• 72% of Twitter users say that they post updates related to their personal life, activities, or interests. A total of one in five (19%) say they post personal updates once a day or more.
• 62% said they post updates related to their work life, activities, or interests, with 12% doing so on a daily basis.
• 55% of these Twitter users share links to news stories. One in ten (12%) do this at least once a day.
• 54% say they post humorous or philosophical observations about life in general, with 16% doing so on a daily basis.
• 53% use Twitter to retweet material posted by others, with 18% doing so on a daily basis.
• 52% send direct messages to other users, with 11% doing so on a daily basis.
• 40% use Twitter to share photos with others, with 12% going so at least once a day.
• 28% use Twitter to share videos with others. Fewer than one in ten Twitter users (8%) do this once a day or more.
• 24% use the service to tweet their location, with 7% of users doing so on a daily basis.

One-quarter of Twitter users check in multiple times a day for tweets from others, while one in five never check for new material on the site.

Here’s a visual breakdown about how those users are actually leveraging Twitter:

Grab a copy of the report (PDF).

Tagged as: Twitter