CNET News is a quality news source, I am quite a fan. However, sometimes as everyone does (I am surely no exception), they say something that still makes no sense what so ever. To begin, we all know that Twitter is growing like a cancerous weed with rocket packs, take a look at this chart. So, we would expect given its current growth curve, that it has yet to mature, and capture its full audience. If it had, where would it be growing?
Young Adults (18-24), are an important demographic on the internet. Aside from the the 30-somethings who always seem to decide the next inane meme, YA’s tend to be trend setters. CNET News reports that only 22% of Young Adults are on Twitter. When I first read that, I thought the number was too high! Though I am working vigorously to throw off the chains, I still fall into the Young Adult category (sadly, for not too much longer), and cannot think that more than 5% of my cohorts are on Twitter.
But 22%, what does that mean? That in more or less the last 4 months Twitter has almost quintupled in size (see the compete graph). While not an exact measure, if you assume that YA’s make up a standard percentage of the Twitter user base, then they have gone from around 4% of Young Adults to 20+% in four months. I am sorry, CNET, how is that not impressive?
The story ends in a quote from a completely confused soul, talking about how Young Adults have yet to embrace micro-blogging as a concept, etc. Apparently she has never heard of Facebook Status, Plurk, FriendFeed, etc. Anyway, Twitter is still growing like a crack addled demon, and it will expand in all demographics in the coming months.
Back to work, nothing to see here.
