Tweet This (from Tom Webster)

Twitter Used by 8% of Americans 12+

Later this spring, we'll be releasing an update to our 2010 report, The Social Habit, which will provide new insights on social media usage, behaviors and trends. We'll be announcing the details in the coming weeks, but here is a sneak preview of some of the baseline data we'll be talking about for the next several months.

We've been tracking Twitter in our Edison Research/Arbitron Internet & Multimedia Series since 2008, and we've seen steady gains in both awareness and usage. In this year's study, our 19th in this series with our partners at Arbitron, we can report that awareness of Twitter is nearly universal - in fact, it's difficult to see how it could be much higher. Awareness of Twitter amongst Americans 12+ currently stands at 92%:

Twitter usage, on the other hand, does have significant room for growth. This year, we are reporting that eight percent of Americans 12+ are current users of Twitter, up one percentage point from last year:

Based upon these data, and the current U.S. population figures, we estimate that the number of Americans who are currently using Twitter has risen from approximately 17 million persons 12+, to approximately 20 million.