Who’s Tweeting?

By: Jordan Rowe

If America learned nothing else in the turn of the century, they learned to express thoughts in 140 characters or less. Yes, I’m talking about the social networking and micro-blogging site Twitter. Just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock the past few years, I’ll give a quick description of the site. Members send out text-based posts (called “tweets”) of 140 characters or less, and can subscribe to other members posts by becoming a “follower” of them. Ranked as the third most used social network by complete.com, the site continues to grow at an alarming rate. Who’s driving Twitter’s popularity you might ask? You would probably answer teenagers. Wrong! Just 11 percent of Twitter’s users are between the ages of 12 to 17 according to comScore. Instead, success has come from a much older group. Many of Twitter’s users are adults who have never used other social networking sites. They are middle to upper class, white collar workers who want to converse, promote, and pass-along various bits of information about themselves. Pew Research Center did a poll earlier this year and found that the median age of a Twitter user is 31 years of age.

Twitter has become a popular way for businesses to get word out to potential customers about company news, such as new products or promotional campaigns. The site has also provided a way for people to connect and follow the lives of famous celebrities, such as Aston Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey. Members can even subscribe to tweets from news services, such as CNN or Fox News to get breaking headlines at any hour of the day. Twitter’s growth among the working class rather than among adolescents is an interesting case. But, I think the public nature of the site drives many teenagers away from using Twitter. It’s likely that they don’t want their parents (who may have accounts) to know what they are posting, and other social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, offer more privacy. But, Twitter is an unusual example of an older generation embracing the new media culture in which we live.