11% of online adults use Twitter or update their status online.
Twitter users are mobile, less tethered by technology.
New study from Pew Internet available here
This does not include adults who read and update their status on facebook, so we can only assume that the percentage of adults is much higher as Twitter has a smaller reach that FB.
http://steverubel.typepad.com/files/pip-twitter-memo-final.pdf
UPDATE: Qbert72 pointed out a grey area in the polling methodology.
It reads as follows: "Use Twitter or another service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others".
While this does not explicitly lead Facebook users to answer yes, it prevents the data to reflect Twitter-only users versus users who have have updated their status in another social network platform.
As Qbert72 was lightning quick to point out, the 1st footnote makes light of the definition of said-Twitter:
"This definition can also potentially include use of status messages or mood and location messages on a social network site. All references to “Twitter user” in this report refer to those who say they update their status on social networks or elsewhere online."
Clearly the grey area was probably flagged at Pew and the footnote was inserted, *sigh*, thus making the 11% metric a little more ambiguous. However, looking at status updates/tweets on a platform neutral stance, and setting aside "generalized media Twitter hard-on" conspiracy theories, the adoption rate for ambiant awareness intensive tools is tremendous.
On a footnote of my own, I will re-state that if a follow up study should be issued and the methodology clearly asked if participants used Facebook to update their online status (versus Twitter) the percentage would still be higher than 11%.
Lettre ouverte à Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois
15 hours ago
Radu, the report mentions in the first footnote that
ReplyDelete"This definition can also potentially include use of status messages or mood and location messages on a
social network site. All references to “Twitter user” in this report refer to those who say they update their
status on social networks or elsewhere online."
So it's actually the reverse of what you're saying. By conflating all forms of online status updates under the label "Twitter user", this report participates in the generalised media Twitter hard-on, which I just don't understand.
Just saw your update...
ReplyDelete1. I'll expand on why I think Twitter's media status is disproportionate with its actual place in real life in a full post somewhere, real soon now.
2. I went and looked at the wording of the question, which I hadn't done before posting my first comment, and you're right that its ambiguousness makes it hard to draw definitive conclusions. Most likely, some Facebook status-updaters understood the question as pertaining to them and some not. So I agree with you that the proportion would probably be higher if the wording explicitly mentioned Facebook status updates.
In an ideal word, the question would ask the same "yesterday|a while ago|never|WTF?" question about a series of named services and of clear actions, i.e.:
"updated your status on Facebook?"
"updated your status on Twitter?"
"changed your mood on MySpace?"
And so on and so forth. Polling is hard.