According to a survey conducted by Twitter and the American Press Institute, the social media platform is the most widely used source for news across all other networking sites. The study was limited to people in the US and had over 4713 participants.
It was conducted from November 23 to December 15 last year, in collaboration with research firm DB5. The survey was held online and consisted of 3713 Twitter users. A comparison sample of 1000 other social media consumers, 469 of which were not members of the microblogging site, made up the rest of the contributors.
The study found that nearly 9 in 10 Twitter users in the study employed the site for news. This translates to over 86% of the people surveyed, with 74% of them being daily consumers. Approximately 40% utilized the service for both breaking alerts and reports in general.
The investigation discovered that Twitter members sometimes looked at news on the platform as a way to pass time, but became more active if it’s a fast-moving event. They become more participatory and engage in posting, commenting and sharing at a quicker pace.
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Overall, 94% of news consumers got their information either from going through their timelines or reading the tweets of the accounts they follow. Only 34% of them said they got reports from trending topics, while just 30% used the search tool.
73% of Twitter regulars follow journalists and commentators. They are also very likely to uncover new writers and track their work, even going beyond the confines of the microblogging site. 82% accessed the networking platform through their handsets and the vast majority of users tend to be younger.
All in all, the new data uncovered by this survey should present news publishers with an inkling of how they can efficiently use Twitter to increase their visibility.