Last week, Nielsen announced its Twitter statistics about youths. Even with a 10.7% reach of the entire Internet user population, only 16% of Twitter’s website users are under the age of 25.
The site’s reach is only 6.6% for kids, teens and young adults; adults are almost doubling that with 12.1% reach. And if you think tech savvy youths are using other Twitter clients and platforms such as Tweetdeck, you are wrong.
90% of Tweetdeck users are also over the age of 25. It’s official, Twitter has failed (hence the fail whale) in attracting teens!
With a quarter of active Internet users taken up by youths, this figure is supposedly alarming. But wait; if you think about it, the results are not at all surprising.
Twitter is too commercialized
Twitter is the playground for adults, simply because it’s a great vehicle to promote products, spread brand names and receive news. Teens are obviously not into that. They are also not welcome by most adult tweeters as they are not a main target audience. There is so much B2B activity going on – for instance, the pushing of SEO services and follower growth products.
Imagine logging on to a home page full of commercial tweets if you were a teen! It’s an immediate turn off.
Teens enjoy own circle of friends
Unlike Facebook and MySpace, Twitter is about having a huge following; strangers included. But what teens really care about are their friends and their close knitted community. They only bother about who their friends are fans of and what they are really up to. They only want to view pictures, videos and notes shared by their friends and honestly, don’t appreciate links shared by a SEO CEO. With only 16% youths on Twitter, we cannot expect teens to want to be part of it. Their friends are just not there and because of that, we can presume slow growth in Twitter in terms of teens usage.
Moreover, Twitter is also positioning itself away from whatever little appeal it has with teens. Twitter’s new homepage made it clear that Twitter is now a page to be updated with latest news and events. Honestly, how many teens would be interested in trending topics like #iranelection?
Twitter is not that fun, yet
Whatever Twitter can do, Facebook can too. Status updates? You can do it on Facebook. Sharing? You can do it on Facebook. Games and Quizzes? Facebook is way better. All but one thing, Twitter can reach a huge audience with a single tweet. But teens don’t need that.
On the other hand, whatever Facebook has, Twitter might not have. Groups and Pages? Restaurant City? Challenging your friends on other Playfish Games? Fun boxes that can be displayed on your wall? Event planning? Picture and Video Albums? Photo Tagging? Twitter doesn’t have any of that. Pretty much explains why teens are not tweeting.
