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Baby Boomers may be shocked to learn that e-mail is the now the technology equivalent of snail mail.
The techno savvy, who tend to be in their 20s and 30s, are communicating more through social networks and microblogs such as Twitter than they are with good old fashioned email.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project has been keeping close tabs on how the web -- and its many facets -- has become ingrained in our day-to-day lives.
Its most recent study looked at the growth of Twitter.
"As of December 2008, 11percent of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others," said the study.
That percentage was 9 in November 2008 and it was 6 percent in May 2008.
Created in 2006, Twitter has about 1.6 million users and is growing. It allows users to send and read each other users' updates -- called tweets -- which are text-based posts no more than140 characters in length (compared with 160 characters for cell phone texts).
The growth of the use of Twitter has, so far, left Baby Boomers behind. It's not surprising since most early adopters of new uses of technology tend to be younger.
With Twitter, according to the study:
- 19 percent are 18 to 24 years old;
- 20 percent are 25 to 34 years old;
- 10 percent are 35 to 44 years old;
- 5 percent are 45 to 54 years old;
- 4 percent are 55 to 64 years old;
- 2 percent are 64 and older.
"... the median age of a Twitter user is 31. In comparison, the median age of a MySpace user is 27, Facebook user is 26 and LinkedIn user is 40.7," said the study.
An interesting component of Twitter is how it's been adopted to disseminate news through updates and links to stories or photos.
The first images of the miraculous plane crash in January into the Hudson River were distributed via Twitter. But (newspapers take note) while the Twitter user is a news consumer the Twitter user tends not to be a newspaper reader.
"Twitterers are less likely to read a printed copy of a newspaper, but more likely to read a newspaper online (76% vs. 60% of non-Twitter users), and more likely to read a news story on a cell phone (14% vs. 6%) or on a smart phone (17% vs. 7%)," said the study.
By the way, to follow me on Twitter click here.
Pew Internet & American Life Project
Comments
The problem with this take is that Twitter isn't like email. Email is a faster means of exchanging notes, information, than USPS. Twitter is micro-blog that is primarily used to network and build relationships with people of like interests. You don't need to have another person's address; all you need is to have an account to follow another. You can exchange information and interact with others, or not. (Of course you benefit from a give-and-take.) It's not synonymous to email, though.
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