Pew Internet & American Life Project
Only eight percent of online adults are Twitter users, and two percent use the service on a daily basis, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. While posting personal updates is prevalent, news sharing and consumption also play a significant role.
This is the first Pew survey to focus specifically on Twitter use, as past reports have combined “Twitter and other services” in the survey questions.
The results provide some demographic data:
- Women are slightly more likely than average to use Twitter, men slightly less.
- African-American and Latino Internet users are more than twice as likely as whites to use Twitter.
- Young adults, 18-29, are almost twice as likely to be Twitter users, compared to other age groups.
Of interest to those using Twitter as a distribution channel for news content, 24 percent of surveyed Twitter users check the service “several times a day” for updates and another 12 percent check daily.
The study also asked Twitter users what type of content they typically shared with their networks. While 72 percent post personal updates, 55 percent also share links to news stories, and 12 percent do so daily.
