SFN report: 18.1 million or 10.8 percent of U.S. online users tweet in 2010

Posted by Erina Lin on January 28, 2010 at 3:51 PM

Twitter has gained enormous popularity globally since its launch in 2006. According to Alexa, Twitter was ranked 29th in terms of Web traffic. A compete.com blog entry in February 2009 ranked it as the third most used social network, with about six million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits. However, only about four out of 10 users are retained, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

Nielsen ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009, with a monthly growth of 1,382 percent, while Zimbio and Facebook followed with an increase of 240 percent and 228 percent, respectively.

According to eMarketer, in 2008, there were only six million Twitter users, or 3.8 percent of the U.S. online population, accessing the site via any platform on at least a monthly basis.

The number increased to 12.2 million, or 7.4 percent of all U.S. Internet users, in 2009, and will continue to rise to 18.1 million and 10.8 percent in 2010, eMarketer predicts.

According to comScore, most of U.S. Twitter users are between age 25 and 54. Those between age 45 and 54 are 36 percent more likely to use Twitter than the average online user. Those between ages 25 and 34 are 30 percent more likely to access Twitter, while people between age 35 and 44 are nine percent more likely, according to the report, World Digital Media Trends 2009, released by SFN and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.