Tweeting gains in popularity, according to Pew

According to the recently released results of a survey conducted on behalf of Pew Internet between August and September 2009, 19 percent of Internet users say they use Twitter or another service to share and read personal updates. This is up from 11 percent reported in previous surveys conducted in December 2008 and April 2009.

Interestingly, the more mobile devices a person owns (laptop, mobile phone, game console or a Kindle), the more likely they are to use a social networking 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 Internet users under age 44.

Age is a major indicator of what type of service is being used, it appears. The latest Pew numbers reveal that nearly 37 percent of Internet users ages 18-24 now employ Twitter or another social networking service, up from 19 percent in December 2008. According to the data, the median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has not changed. The median age for a MySpace user is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook is a bit surprising, showing a median age of 33, up from 26 in May 2008.

Click here to read the full study.

Two related studies shed a bit more light on the development of this social media whirlwind we all seem so caught up in:

1. Pear Analytics in August took snapshots of Twitter postings every 30 minutes for two weeks and concluded that 40.5 percent of all Tweets were “pointless babble.” 
2. Which is maybe why a July 2009 survey by LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll, found that only 8 percent of advertisers reportedly deemed Twitter an effective promotional tool.

–Michael Hodgson