According to a new survey, young people don’t like Twitter.
Well, they like Twitter but no where near as much as like social networks. The survey by Pace University and the Participatory Media Network found that 22% of people between 18 and 24-years-old had a Twitter account while 99% – which seems awful high – had a social network profile.
Of the young folks using Twitter, 85% of them follow friends, 54% follow celebrities, 29% follow family members and 29% follow companies.
So what does the survey suggest about Twitter and its growth potential?
It may mean that younger people get their “micro fix” from text-messaging and SMS as opposed to Twitter. It could suggest Twitter hasn’t trickled down to this particular demographic just as it took some time for Facebook to gain traction among older people after being the hot platform for university students.
To be honest, I’m always a little leery of relying on surveys to make proclamations about things, particularly technology trends and services that can soar or die in an instant.
But I can’t say that I’m too surprised by the lack of interest in Twitter among younger people given their ardor for other kinds of messaging services.
For more, check out CNet.
One Comment
So when the youngin's grow up and enter the business world what will they do? They'll have to trade in texting and SMS for some other communication platform as the contacts they need to communicate with are mot going to use text messaging. E-mail is a given defacto standard right now, but twitter (or whatever it is to become) is likely to gain wider acceptance as they enter the workforce as it more closeley resembles texting. It would be interesting to see different age breakdown for this study; say 18-22 and 23-26. The first group would be college student age and the second newly entered to the job market, That might be more telling.