Chart of the week: Who uses Twitter?
Several demographic groups stand out as having high rates of Twitter usage relative to their peers:
- African-Americans — Black internet users continue to use Twitter at high rates. More than one quarter of online African-Americans (28%) use Twitter, with 13% doing so on a typical day.
- Young adults — One quarter (26%) of internet users ages 18-29 use Twitter, nearly double the rate for those ages 30-49. Among the youngest internet users (those ages 18-24), fully 31% are Twitter users.
- Urban and suburban residents — Residents of urban and suburban areas are significantly more likely to use Twitter than their rural counterparts.
Meta tweeting.
New Twitter stats: 15% of online adults use Twitter, 8% do so on a typical day
We’ve got brand spanking new Twitter numbers out today! As of February 2012, overall Twitter adoption by online adults is at 15%, which has remained steady since May 2011, when overall Twitter adoption by Internet users was 13%. Notably, though, the % of online adults who use Twitter on a typical day has doubled since May 2011 and has quadrupled since late 2010—at that point just 2% of online adults used Twitter on a typical day. Now, 8% of online adults use Twitter on a typical day.
More key findings:
- African-Americans continue to use Twitter at very high rates—28% of online African-Americans are Twitter adopters, and 13% use the service on a typical day.
- Usage by young internet users (those 18-24 years old) increased dramatically over the last year, with nearly one in three now using Twitter.
- Our data also suggests that these trends are deeply intertwined with mobile Twitter usage on smartphones. Fully 20% of smartphone owners use Twitter overall, and 16% use the service specifically on their cell phones.
(Source: pewinternet.org)
Top stories on social media week of May 14-20: X Factor judges, Lady Gaga tweet, Apple rumors (from our friends at the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism).
As is often the case, pop culture icons were a hot topic on Twitter last week. The No. 1 subject was the Irish-British band One Direction. It has already been one of the top five subjects on Twitter six times in 2012.
More on Facebook/Twitter and the news - http://pewrsr.ch/FQRIlJ
(Source: stateofthemedia.org)
The rampant spread of the viral Kony 2012 video: New Pew Research Center analysis
In case you missed it yesterday, a new Pew Research Center report tracks how the “Kony 2012” video and information about it reached so many Americans in a relatively short period of time, and the critical role social media played, especially for adults under age 30.
Fast facts:
- 27% of young adults first heard about it through social media such as Facebook or Twitter and another 8% learned about it via other internet sources
- The internet was more than three times more important as a news-learning platform for young adults than traditional media such as television, newspapers, and radio
- For those ages 30-49, the mix of news sources was about even: 22% first learned of the “Kony 2012” video from internet sources – 15% via social media – and 21% learned from traditional media sources
- 66% of the Twitter conversation from March 5-12 supported the anti-Kony campaign; 17% was skeptical or negative about it; and 16% was neutral (mostly consisting of people asking questions about what was going on)
A great report out yesterday from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that cable leads the pack as the campaign news source, and Facebook and Twitter play only modest roles. Fewer Americans are closely following news about the presidential campaign than four years ago.
Also of note: 68% say they prefer to get political news from sources that do not have a political point of view, compared with just 23% who prefer news from sources that share their point of view. (via)
Teens migrating to Twitter — sometimes for privacy
16% of 12-17 year-olds said they used Twitter in our survey last July. Two years earlier, that percentage was just 8 (see http://pewrsr.ch/vWuMHJ).
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(via Hootsuite: Top Trending Brands on Twitter [Infographic])](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxla80gaHh1qejjfeo1_500.jpg)
Last week’s top stories in social media
From the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism New Media Index:
Last week, Apple news was the top shared story on blogs
Korean pop group Super Junior won the top slot on Twitter, with Justin Beiber in second place
And the FedEx delivery man throwing a computer monitor over a fence scored first place on YouTube.
New report: Why Americans use social media
Our latest report takes a quick but informative look at why Americans use social media:
Two-thirds of online adults (66%) use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or LinkedIn. These internet users say that connections with family members and friends (both new and old) are a primary consideration in their adoption of social media tools. Roughly two thirds of social media users say that staying in touch with current friends and family members is a major reason they use these sites, while half say that connecting with old friends they’ve lost touch with is a major reason behind their use of these technologies.
Other factors play a much smaller role—14% of users say that connecting around a shared hobby or interest is a major reason they use social media, and 9% say that making new friends is equally important. Reading comments by public figures and finding potential romantic partners are cited as major factors by just 5% and 3% of social media users, respectively.
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at how mainstream media outlets use Twitter.
A new report from PEJ, based on analysis of more than 3,600 tweets over the course of a week, finds that news organizations use “Twitter primarily as an added means to disseminate their own material.” Read more in the full report at journalism.org.
From our new report: Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites
Part 2: What teens experience and how they behave on social network sites
The majority of teens have positive online experiences, but some are caught in an online feedback loop of meanness and negative experiences:
- Most of the 77% of all teens who use social media say their experience is that people their age are mostly kind to one another on social network sites—overall, 69% say their experience is that peers are mostly kind to each other in social network spaces. Another 20% say their peers are mostly unkind, while 11% volunteered that “it depends.”
- However, in a similar question asked of adults 18 and older, 85% of social media-using adults reported that their experience was that people are mostly kind to one another on social network sites, while just 5% reported that they see people behaving in mostly unkind ways.
When we asked them to describe how people act online, the results were pretty negative:
…but the teens who were asked about how they thought people should act online gave responses that were substantially more positive:
From our new report: Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites - Teens and social network sites
We have a huge new report out today about how teens navigate interactions on social network sites and Twitter. It’s a big report, and covers a lot of ground—the above infographics are just from the first section, an overview of how many teens are on social media, who they are, and what they do there. More to follow…
