Twitter Usage In America 2010 Report

Frank Gruber April 29, 2010 Tweet

Edison Research and Arbitron released study today titled Twitter Usage in America 2010, that shares some interesting data about usage of social networking site like Facebook and Twitter. The study presents three years of tracking data from a nationally representative telephone survey (via landline and mobile phone) of 1,753 Americans, and was conducted in February 2010.

Some highlights from the study include:

• Awareness of Twitter has exploded from 5% of Americans 12+ in 2008 to 87% in 2010 (by comparison, Facebook’s awareness is 88%)
• Despite equal awareness, Twitter trails Facebook significantly in usage: 7% of Americans (17 million persons) actively use Twitter, while 41% maintain a profile page on Facebook.
• Nearly two-thirds of active Twitter users access social networking sites using a mobile phone
• 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks

I think it’s worth noting that the report found that while Twitter and Facebook are neck and neck when it comes to awareness, Facebook is still well ahead of Twitter on usage. It will be interesting to see if Twitter will close that gap. I also thought it was intriguing to realize that the core Twitter demographic information which showed that Twitter has more women (53 percent) than men and the most users 25 to 35 year old (33 percent). Finally, the report showed a lack of awareness for location-based services which means we are still very much at the front end of the location-based service curve.

The entire report can be found and downloaded here or you can view it (below).

Twitter Usage in America 2010