Quick Poll Results - Social Media

Last week I invited to you participate in a quick poll about social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook.  I hope you took 30 seconds to participate!

Here's the results:

Interesting!  I wonder if the same people are on both?  That would make a good follow-up question!  I probably should have asked about MySpace as well.

In 2010 the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that:

Both teen and adult use of social networking sites has risen significantly, yet there are shifts and some declines in the proportion of teens using several social networking site features.

• 73% of wired American teens now use social networking websites, a significant increase from previous surveys. Just over half of online teens (55%) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65% did so in February 2008.
• 47% of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37% in November 2008.
• Young adults act much like teens in their tendency to use these sites. Fully 72% of online 18-29-year-olds use social networking websites, nearly identical to the rate among teens, and significantly higher than the 40% of internet users ages 30 and older who use these sites.
• Adults are increasingly fragmenting their social networking experience as a majority of those who use social networking sites (52%) say they have two or more different profiles. That is up from 42% who had multiple profiles in May 2008.
• Facebook is currently the most commonly used online social network among adults. Among adult profile owners, 73% have a profile on Facebook, 48% have a profile on MySpace and 14% have a LinkedIn profile.¹ 
• The specific sites on which young adults maintain their profiles are different from those used by older adults: Young profile owners are much more likely to maintain a profile on MySpace (66% of young profile owners do so, compared with just 36% of those ages 30 and older) but less likely to have a profile on the professionally-oriented LinkedIn (7% vs. 19%). In contrast, adult profile owners under 30 and those 30 and older are equally likely to maintain a profile on Facebook (71% of young profile owners do so, compared with 75% of older profile owners).

Teens are not using Twitter in large numbers. While teens are bigger users of almost all other online applications, Twitter is an exception.

• 8% of internet users ages 12-17 use Twitter.² This makes Twitter as common among teens as visiting a virtual world, and far less common than sending or receiving text messages -- as 66% of teens do -- or going online for news and political information, done by 62% of online teens.
• Older teens are more likely to use Twitter than their younger counterparts; 10% of online teens ages 14-17 do so, compared with 5% of those ages 12-13.
• High-school-age girls are particularly likely to use Twitter. 13% of online girls ages 14-17 use Twitter, compared with 7% of boys that age.
• Using different wording, we find that 19% of adult internet users use Twitter or similar services to post short status updates and view the updates of others online.
• Young adults lead the way when it comes to using Twitter or status updating. One-third of online 18-29 year-olds post or read status updates.

Note that those statistics are two years old!  That's a long time in technology!

Here's some other info from Pew for you to consider.  How do you compare?

Created by: Online Graduate Programs