13% of Americans use Twitter; Use Varies by Race and Age

My participation as a "tweep" at the White House's Twitter Town Hall last week has encouraged me to spend more time reviewing what we know about who is using the 140 character driven social media service.


According to a report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 13% of Americans now use Twitter (May 2011, up from 8% in November 2010). What's even more interesting is the demographics of who is using Twitter. As Pew reports:


Non-white internet users continue to have higher rates of Twitter use than their white counterparts; indeed, the Twitter-adoption gap between African-Americans and whites has increased over the past six months. In November 2010, there was an eight percentage point difference in Twitter use between African-American and white internet users (13% for blacks vs. 5% for whites). By May 2011, that gap was 16 percentage points -- 25% of online African Americans now use Twitter, compared with 9% of such whites. African-American and Latino internet users are each significantly more likely than whites to be Twitter adopters. Even more notable: One in ten African-American internet users now visit Twitter on a typical day -- that is double the rate for Latinos and nearly four times the rate for whites.






And moreover, Twitter is on the rise for those between the ages of 25-44 but Twitter adoption rates for 18-24 year olds remained stable between November 2010 and May 2011.






Look for Twitter usage rates to increase as we get closer to 2012.

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