Twitter's News Consumers Tend To Be Younger, More Educated, Mobile and Affluent

As Twitter is headed swiftly towards it IPO, possible investors face questions about the platform's future, as well as its possible mainstream appeal and usage. Before putting money into Twitter, basically the question is, "What is it really good for?" Well one answer is pretty clear. According to a new Pew Research Center report, over half of Twitter users are using it as a news source.

Released Monday, the Pew Research Journalism Project has conducted a study on how news is consumed on the 140 character platform. Among the major findings from the two-part inquiry - based on a survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults and a subsequent analysis of Twitter conversations about major news events over the past three years - are that about 52 percent of U.S. adult Twitter users have used it to get news. ("News" was defined as "information about events and issues that involve more than just your friends and family.)

That half of But only about 16 percent of U.S. adults use Twitter, making the total U.S. news consumption on the platform about eight percent. Compared to Facebook, which about 67 percent of online adults use, according to a Dec. 2012 Pew study, Twitter's news consumer-base looks small: a total of 30 percent of U.S. adults get their news on Facebook.

But Twitter has advantages over the much larger social networking site: "Twitter's news consumers stand out as younger, more mobile and more educated," according to the Pew report.

For example, 85 percent of Twitter news consumers get their news, at least sometimes, on their mobile devices, compared to 64 percent of Facebook news consumers - despite the recent mobile push by Mark Zuckerberg's social network. That's more than double the total population of news consumers, about 40 percent of who have consumed news on their mobile devices.

A large segment of Twitter news consumers are of the young adult demographic that marketers so covet. Of the half of Twitter users that consumer news on the microblogging platform, almost half of them (45 percent) are young, between 18 and 29 years old. Once again, that's more than double the general population (21 percent) and higher than Facebook's news consumers, of which the young demographic makes just over a third (34 percent). Twitter news consumers tend to be more educated and more affluent than other news consumers.

Twitter Conversations

As media watchers know, Twitter is used to aggregate and share bits of information (or misinformation, as the case may be). Notable events that Twitter led, while Pew monitored, included the Trayvon Martin case and the rollout of the Afordable Care Act.

Pew also noted that Twitter conversations about big news events changes as the stories develop, though those conversations cannot be used as an accurate barometer for overall public opinion. For example, Ron Paul won the Twitter primary by a landslide during the 2012 primary campaign, while the general population did not share the same sentiment with these young, educated, and generally affluent news consumers.

For more information on Pew report, check out Journalism.org's page.