Want proof that Twitter is not just a flash in the pan? Check out the latest research from Susannah Fox, Kathryn Zickuhr, and Aaron Smith at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
According to their most recent report, 19% of all Internet Users are now using Twitter or some other micro-blogging service. This has grown from December 2008 and April 2009, when only 11% of Internet users said they used a micro-blogging service. This report follows 10 months after Pew Internet reported that 35% of all adult Internet users have a profile on at least one social network.
In other words, not only are the adult populations on social networks growing, but Twitter and micro-blogging usage is growing as well.
There are three populations who are responsible for this growth: social network users, mobile Internet users, and younger (under 44 years) Internet users.
(Let me first take this opportunity to thank the Pew Internet & American Life Project for recognizing that 42 is still young.)
I was particularly interested in these findings, and the idea that people who are on Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn are 35% more likely to use Twitter, as compared to the 6% of Twitter users who don’t use anything else.
The message to marketers, public relations flaks, and crisis communicators is that while you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one social media basket, you are more likely to reach people if you stick with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, because they’ll be on more than one network.
Find the two or three networks they’re likely to be on, and focus most of your energies on them creating deep and wide networks, rather than spreading yourself out to 8 – 10 different networks and keeping a shallow presence on each of them.
(Hat tip to my good friend Lalita Amos for turning me on to Pew Internet & American Life. These guys are a font of information!)
