Pew: Almost 20 Percent of Internet Users Update Status With Twitter (Or Other Social Net)

Oct 22, 2009 at 9:18am ET by Greg Sterling

Already widely reported from yesterday the Pew Internet & American Life almost 20 percent of US Internet users are on Twitter or updating their status with another social network: LinkedIn, MySpace or Facebook. According to the report:

Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service.

Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users – those under age 44.

Here’s Pew’s demographic breakdown:

According to the report, parsing by network:

The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.

The Pew report paints a slightly different and younger picture of Twitter users than earlier studies:

Source: comScore, February, 2009 (via MarketingCharts)

Here’s the breakdown of social networking more generally compared with Twitter usage:

The report also found that mobile users and those who have more devices are more likely to use Twitter or a comparable service for status updates.

These data illustrate the growing importance of integrating social media into search marketing strategies.

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and writes a personal blog Screenwerk, examining the broader world of media and advertising. He also posts at a Local Mobile Search, which is focused on the mobile Internet.

See more articles by Greg Sterling >

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