Why Consumers Don't Use Twitter

by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, October 6, 2014

Among the reasons why consumers do not use Twitter, 52% said they view it as a waste of time; 36% don't see the point; and 36% receive news and information from other Web sites. The findings are from a study released Monday that also analyzes the consumer outlook of Web sites, applications and digital media.

Some 57% said that staying up to date was the most popular reason for using Twitter. Following celebrities, with 33% of the vote, came in at No. 2, and socializing with friends and family at 33%, per the Raymond James 3Q14 Internet Consumer Survey.

Twitter use remains flat, with some 34% of respondents identifying themselves as Twitter users vs. 36% participating in the June study. Within this group, 23% expected to increase their use during the coming yea -- up from 21% in June -- and 16% expect to decrease use, up from 13%, respectively.

In addition to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest remain the most used social sites. Facebook leads with 77%, followed by LinkedIn at 37%, Twitter at 34%, and Pinterest at 26%. Of the 77% of consumers using Facebook who participated in a survey, 10% expect to increase their use of Facebook during the next 12 months; 25% expect to decrease; and 65% expect no change.

Google and Yelp corner the local search market being used most for local business reviews, per study. Some 68% of the 410 consumers participating prefer to use Google when researching local businesses, up from 67% in June. Yelp follows with 39%, down from 47%; and Trip Advisor is next at 21%, down from 22%, respectively.

The survey identifies Zillow at the leading real-estate search engine, receiving 38% of votes -- up from 32% in June -- followed by Realtor.com at 30%, up from 24%, and Trulia at 6%, up from 5%, respectively.

Pandora maintains the lead when it comes to Internet music with 41%, although it fell from 47% in the June survey. Sirius XM is next with 14%, followed by Spotify at 13%; iHeart Radio with 12%; and Apple iRadio at 6%.

Among respondents, Netflix was the most popular site for movie streaming at 45%, followed by YouTube at 35%, Amazon at 23%, and Hulu at 22%.

facebook, google, linkedin, media measurement, search, social media, social networks, twitter, yelp

3 comments about "Why Consumers Don't Use Twitter".

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Tiffany Niess from MKT, October 7, 2014 at 2:18 a.m.
I found this article to be very intriguing. Its seem like social media, like twitter are always on the out according to some sources, but yet social media sites, like twitter and Facebook are the most viewed and used websites out there. It is interesting to see that not a lot of people are using twitter these days to communicate, but using it as a source of information, and a daily news source. This is the reason that I feel that most companies choose to spend a large amount of their resources and money on advertising on social media sites, like twitter. Using social media sites allows them to not just advertise to a large audience, but allows them to collect feedback from ad campaigns the created and also allows them to interact with their ad campaign viewers. This is something that ad campaigns would not be able to do without the help of social media, like twitter. The article talks about how twitter usage is down, but I would like to know what they are basing there information off of, because I could see the amount of people that are posting tweets being down, but what about the people that are using twitter just strictly for information gathering, it would be nice to know how many views different popular tweets were getting. I don’t for see twitter or any other social media site loosing a lot of public interest anytime soon. Popularity may jump around from social media site to another social media site, but in the long run I feel that these sites are safe, if only for the fact that some of the most popular ad campaigns are put up on these social media sites.
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Kirk Hazlett from Curry College, October 7, 2014 at 3:19 p.m.

Using Twitter, like any communication platform, requires that you clearly identify your intended audience(s) and develop appropriate messaging. Otherwise, you're doing nothing but spamming. This is a lesson that I try daily to get across to my Curry College "Social Media Communication" students and others.

Albert Maruggi from Give It A Think, October 12, 2014 at 8:28 a.m.

So what are you saying only brands and terrorist organizations are using Twitter?