eMarketer On Social Networking In The US: 57% On Facebook, 11% On Twitter

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Research firm eMarketer estimates that more than half of adult internet users in the US were logging on to Facebook at least once per month at the end of last year. In 2011, the company forecasts that 132.5 million US web users will use the site monthly. Twitter, it adds, will enjoy faster growth rates in the near future but continue to attract ‘relatively few’ online Americans.

An increase of 13.4 percent in the number of users would mean Facebook will reach almost 9 in 10 social network users and 57.1 percent of Internet users this year.

By 2013, eMarketer estimates 62 percent of Web users and almost half (47.6 percent) of the overall US population will be on Facebook.

Twitter, in contrast, was used by 16.4 million US adults, or 9% of the adult internet population, at the end of 2010. eMarketer expects growth to surpass 26 percent in 2011 as Twitter reaches 11% of Internet users and 16.5% of adult social network users in the United States. By 2013, eMarketers forecasts nearly 28 million Americans will be tweeting.

The estimates are based on analysis of survey data and visitor statistics from over a dozen sources, and include US users who use any Internet-enabled device to access their Facebook and/or Twitter accounts at least once a month, including access through third-party apps.

Also see: Global Ad Spending On Facebook Will Reach $4B By Year’s End

Company: Facebook
Website: facebook.com
Launch Date: February 1, 2004
Funding: $2.34B

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term...

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Company: Twitter
Website: twitter.com
Launch Date: March 21, 2006
Funding: $1.16B

Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message. The company has been busy adding features to the product like Gmail import and search. They recently launched a new site section called “Explore” for...

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Company: eMarketer
Website: emarketer.com
Launch Date: 1996
Funding: $25M

eMarketer aggregates digital marketing and media research, providing clients with reports, analysis, charts, articles, interviews, case studies, videos and more.

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