Just 16% of U.S. adults use Twitter and only 8% get their news from Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Just 16% of U.S. adults use Twitter and only 8% get their news from Twitter

philadelphia.cbslocal.com

6 pointscoreymaass11 comments

The problem with twitter is that it's 160 char limit is too short to be useful without an embedded link. That makes it useful for quick notes and as a pointer to actual news but not getting news itself. Since twitter restricts apps from accessing tweets in commercial volume, the usage of tweets to generate "magazines" full of news that are easier to read doesn't happen.

I use it as a subscription mechanism for my blog in addition to rss. But not much more than that.

I actually follow a decent amount of journalists, and they comment a lot on things in a sort of "preview" of what I'll see in tomorrow's paper. For example, with the Iran negotiations, there was a lot of chatter about people entering the building, making comments, etc. It's not the news, but it's like a high-level form of gossip, and pretty real-time.

Plus it's nice to be able to ask a person a question (there's a pretty high response rate when asking a writer something on twitter).

Interesting side-note though : 160 chars in japanese ends up being pretty big content-wise, which is probably why a lot of japanese users don't mind using it as their main social network account.

But 100% of TV networks get their news from Twitter. So, ipso facto, 100% of US Adults get their news from Twitter.

That's no good for Twitter. That just means the TV networks are the ones who get to make the advertising revenues instead of Twitter.

Twitter being constantly mentioned is a nice ad for them. I think they're ok with that setup.

How do these numbers compare to television (sincere question)?

My understanding that in the US, news programs get ratings in single digit percentages. This number is tied to the number of households with televisions (I'm seeing the number 115 million thrown around.)

The few people I know who use it are almost all in marketing or media. I'd love more info on who the 16% are? Are they all news people?

8% of 190 million people is still a good chunk of people (especially considering that twitter is relatively new in the "social networks that are 'in' " category.

A sentence is usually not a paragraph on it's own. A news story should be more than six sentences.

Why not share the actual research instead?

http://www.journalism.org/2013/11/04/twitter-news-consumers-...

Thanks for posting that. I just heard the stat on CBS, and thought it would be interesting to post here to see people's reactions. Do you use Twitter?

Everyday. For me, it is useful as an RSS replacement. It helps me stay in touch with professional contacts and friends. It also gives me access to restricted/famous people.

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