Twitter Use Rises, But It’s Still Far From A Mainstream Platform, Say Studies
A new Pew study showed Twitter usage has risen from 8% of US internet users in the fall 2010 to 13% in May 2011. That's a 62.5% increase, but still not sizeable enough to take Twitter from niche service to a mainstream one. Awareness of Twitter is was 92%, according May's Arbitron and Edison Research numbers, but only 8% of those 12+ up said they had ever used it. Facebook suffers an awareness vs. usage gap, as well.
Arbitron and Edison found that far more people have heard of the social networking giant than use the internet in the US. But Facebook usage is much higher than Twitter's at an estimated 42.3% of consumers and 57.1% of internet uses this year, according to eMarketer.
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Does Twitter need to be “mainstream”? While the company would like to grow their numbers I’m sure, I’m not sure every everyday Jane and Joe posting daily tweets ads any value.
Twitter by design, is a niche product. If you have a fan base or group of strangers that like hearing from you, cool. If there is a revolution going on somewhere in the world and the dictatorship has put a lock on all press and internet activities and some citizens manage to post updates on Twitter, double cool. Other than that, with some exceptions of course, not so cool.