Number of US adult Twitter users to rise 44.4%
There will be 26 million US adult Twitter users in 2010, up 44.4% on 2009, a new forecast from eMarketer estimates.
By 2012 nearly one-fifth of web users, or 36 million people, will be on Twitter, it predicts. These figures include adult users who access Twitter at least monthly via any platform – the web, mobile devices or third-party apps and widgets.
Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report Twitter: A Strong Current in the Social Media Mainstream, said: “The service is now firmly entrenched in the social media world.
“We expect usage levels to continue rising, albeit more moderately, through 2012.”
Recent research from The Nielsen Company revealed that web users across 10 countries spent an average of five and a half hours on social networks in February 2010, up more than two hours from the same period last year.
Users in the UK spent an average of five hours and 50 minutes on social networks during the month, Nielsen found.
Of course, people aren’t just checking social networks via their PC’s, with a comScore study revealing that 30.8% of US smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile in January 2010, a 22.5% year on year increase.