Man, I’ve been reading a ton of crazy awesome stuff this week. My brain is going to explode. Well, actually, that’s what this blog is for, brain shrapnel. (That would make an awesome blog title. I should buy the domain name.)

Today’s reading isn’t really all that new, especially in Internet terms. February 12, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study on the use of Twitter by online adults. You probably heard all about it two weeks ago, but I’m reading it for the first time. (And BTW, a huge thanks to Pew for their incredible research project. I think half of my thesis sources were from them.)

First off, my one beef with this study: Pew’s definition of Twitter includes “use of status messages or mood and location messages on a social network site.” While I agree that all these tweets and status updates are virtually the same thing, calling them all Twitter is misleading. But now you know. Let’s get to the good stuff.

Not surprisingly, Twitter has been most embraced by young adults, 18-24 and 25-34. Perfect, that will be my argument for getting the twentysomethings at LPC to get on Twitter. But let’s think about it. Five years ago when Facebook launched, it was launched to the public, the older young adults were in college–Facebook’s target. And the younger group was in high school, Facebook’s second target. It’s also important to note that after age 35, the use of Twitter drops to 10%. That means I’ll have to work on getting many of the parents at LPC to use these services.

Another big “surprise,” Twitterers are more likely to use wireless devices when making updates. In fact 76% of them use the Internet wirelessly (17), and they’re more likely to use their cell phones to text and go online than the rest of the cell-phone using population. When we get bored, we whip out the laptop or iPhone and see what everyone else is up to online. If LPC’s people aren’t wireless in one form or another, the chances that they’re going to tweet are slim. Good to know.

I love this: “The use of Twitter is highly intertwined with the use of other social media; both blogging and social network use increase the likelihood that an individual also uses Twitter” (9). I could’ve told you that. Social media is like crack. You start blogging, then you start reading other people’s blogs, then you follow them on Twitter or friend them on Facebook, and before you know it you’ve made friends with people you don’t even know (Hi, lifestudent and Lorraine!)

Pew presents a “portrait of a Twitter user” (12) and gives some key demographic information on Twitterers. For one, their median age is 31 (13), right around the median age at LifePoint. They’re also more racially and ethnically diverse, but that’s because the youngest American young adults are more diverse than the rest of the population (14). Twitterers can mostly be found in urban areas (35%), which is probably due to better Internet, wireless, and cell phone services in those areas. Because let’s face it, if you are using dialup in your rural neck of the woods, the last thing you want to do is waste time and bandwidth telling other people what you are doing, which is waiting for pages to load. Ozark presents a challenge. In the last 15 years, it’s grown from very rural to nearly urban. Internet and cell phone services have kept up, but there are many people who still live in what we call “the sticks.” Not that they’re rednecks or anything, but once you get out of city limits, Internet service often goes down the drain. And so does their Twittering.

Twitterers like getting their news on their mobile devices, and they’re less likely to use traditional media (like physical newspapers) to get their news. If this isn’t an argument to communicate LifePoint news via Twitter, I don’t know what is. Pew wraps up their report with this:

Twitter users engage with new and own technology at the same rates as other Internet users, but the ways in which they use the technology–to communicate, gather, and share information–reveals their affinity for mobile, untethered, and social opportunities for interaction. … Twitter … enhances these opportunities (22).

So I guess the key is to get our people the information they want so they can “communicate, gather, and share” it. The question remains, Are we providing the information that they want? I’d like to think we are, but it’s tough to tell. Communication around here seems to be one way, and there aren’t very many two-way conversations regarding the information we provide. Good thing? Bad thing? I’m not sure.