The Pew Internet and American Life Project has brought us valuable statistics and reported notable trends in internet use over the years, and a recent report focused on the growing use of Twitter as a means of social networking. Twitter could be described as a social networking platform that punches above its weight class. Twitter turned six this past March, and by its own accounts has some 140 million users sending some 340 million tweets a day. For the sake of comparison, Facebook has over 900 million.
Yet Twitter’s political and cultural impact is almost equivalent, even if it has only 15.5% as many users. Note theHow does Twitter have such an oversized geopolitical impact? The same reason local nonprofits should be developing a presence on the social network.
The future of technology is, of course, mobile. Twitter started in 2006 when smartphone development was still embryonic (a year before Apple’s iPhone presented itself as both harbinger of things to come and standard by which all others paled). Yet Twitter seems perfectly suited to the age of mobile technology: 140 characters sent over internet or cell-carrier networks is a good deal easier than uploading movies to your Facebook Timeline.
Which may be why The Pew Internet Project has found that use of Twitter has almost doubled in but two years, while the number of those using the micro-blogging platform has grown four times in the same period. The absolute numbers might be small compared to Facebook, but the stunning growth, along with the stunning growth in mobile devices, means Twitter is the need-to-know platform for social communication.
Sure, we’ve encouraged use of Twitter for some time on our blog. So what makes this latest report by the Pew Project so important? Pew’s breakdown of demographics calls attention to at least a few striking statistics. First, men and women use Twitter pretty much equally (14 & 15 percent respectively). So your nonprofit’s message can easily breach any perceived sex divide (In contrast, some 82% of Pinterest users are women, according to Forbes.com.).
Also, if we look at incomes and ages, Pew reports that the two largest groups of Twitterers are those under 30 and those between 30 and 49. Ok, no surprise there. But by income, those making $30k or less and those making over $75,000 are the two largest participants! The likely crossover is that young people just out of college and just finding their professional feet (no easy task these days) use Twitter, and they are likely still engaged in the social, ethical, economic, and political concerns that first inspire most of us in college. Yet those with incomes high enough that they can engage in high-dollar donations come fairly close behind the the under 30s/under $30,000s. Twitter could be the perfect medium to reach out to the socially motivated and the economically generous all at the same time, all with minimal set-up cast for your organization.
And finally, does anyone expect the under 40s to give up their mobile devices as they move into middle age? Shouldn’t your nonprofit be developing relations via Twitter and those younger users now, so that they can only expand their support as they hopefully gain economic security?