Over the last three months or so, there has been an amazing upsurge in the use of Twitter. This micro-blogging platform that allows you to broadcast to your personal network (and to the world) in short, 140 character blasts — has been growing at a phenomenal rate over the last 12 months — and seems set to continue its upward climb. In August last year, Mashable reported that Twitter had experienced a 422 percent growth in visitor numbers over the previous year — with 2.3 million web visitors. This, however, does not take into account those who access the service through third party applications such as Twirl or TweetDeck.
As consumers and businesses alike continue to adopt and experiment with Web 2.0 platforms such as Twitter, the more important it will be for brands to understand the impacts this will have on their positioning, approach to market, governance processes and potential for promotion.
Read more in my article on this topic over at the iMedia Asia website.
some people are saying that Twitter is for people aged 20+, all the youngsters are on MSN and other IM networks
what do you think of that Gavin?
It is pretty difficult to get reliable data on Internet users <18 (mostly to do with privacy rules). However, Compete’s recent analysis shows that 18-24 year olds are clearly Twitter’s power users:
http://blog.compete.com/2008/05/15/twitter-traffic-growth-usage-demographics/
Instant messaging tends to be popular with teens – but is also often used in conjunction with other social networks. It will certainly be interesting to see how teenagers’ media consumption/usage will transform as they age and move into the workplace.