As reported by Mashable, numbers out last week by Nielsen reveal that a mere 16 percent of Twitter users are under the age of 25. The largest share of the market by far comes from those in the 25 to 54 age range. Indeed, “adults are trying Twitter at nearly double the rate” of the young ones.
This is not so surprising to us. In our experience using Twitter, it’s mostly comprised of alpha geeks, journalists, people of note, bloggers and businesses looking for, well, more business. The key links here are business and information sharing. Neither of those things would be interesting to teenagers.
Teens want to connect with their friends, share photos, videos and amusing links. They’re not going to be so interested in the latest breaking news or coupons. Barring the 2008 elections—were you really interested in Iran or 20 percent off when you were 17 and mommy and daddy paid for everything?
In our view, we don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon or at least the concept of it. However, Twitter has got to figure out ways to:
- make money
- integrate with more established social networks like Facebook if it really has a sustainable future.
We see the social networking sites of the future integrating entire social networks (personal and professional – Facebook & LinkedIn), newswires and ways to share large quantities of information while connecting people in unprecedented ways (Twitter), pulled together with more traditional e-communications (email & instant chat).
The first site to harness all these characteristics into one user-friendly working model will, in our opinion, win the internet.
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[...] onto your hats, the social media landscape is far from set in stone. We discussed last week how the kids weren’t on Twitter. We also discussed how the first company to seize on the best aspects of social media combined with [...]