Last year, the news was that “Kids Hate Twitter” and the research backed it up. According to a NY Times article from August 2009 and ComScore, the 12-17 year old demographic made up only 11% of Twitter’s user base. Only 20% of users were under the age of 20. The reasons being that kids thought Twitter was ‘lame’ or ‘too professional’.
That was last year. Now the under 20 demographic accounts for over 30% of Twitter users and growing according to BusinessInsider.
Why is there a shift?
The easiest explanation would be that Twitter is still growing. There are still lots of people joining from all age groups, so if you’re looking for an older audience, don’t be scared at all. Since most of the early adopters of Twitter were an older crowd (and by older we mean above 25…hardly ‘older’) there is more room for the kids to come in.
Why now? Well it could be accredited to celebrity and mainstream adoption. Teen stars and celebrities like Miley Cyrus are using Twitter to keep themselves in the public spotlight and fans use it as a way to keep up with and even communicate with their favorite stars and idols. Also we see Twitter being mentiond more and more in commercials, TV and of course on the internet.
What does this mean?
What this means to you all depends on your product, brand, or reason for using Twitter. If you’re marketing to a professional group in a B2B fashion, it means very little. Should you abandon your marketing efforts on Twitter since more younger people are joining now? Absolutely not. It’s business as usual for you. The core audience of Twitter is growing as well, just not as quickly as the under 25 crowd.
If you’re marketing to a younger crowd and have been reluctant to spend a lot of time and effort on Twitter, now you may want to start changing that line of thinking and get Twitter more involved in the marketing mix.
Over time the demographics will continue to change but the sheer volume of users will always be enticing to almost all demographics. The important idea to remember when marketing through social media is that you need to ENGAGE the consumer, and take advantage of all the social media monitoring options available to expand your reach and uncover new opportunities.
