There are a lot of black people on Twitter. The numbers, taken from the annual report on Twitter by Edison Research, don’t lie. While black people make up about 12% of the general population, they account for 25% of the population of users on Twitter. I always felt like this was true in my day to day use of Twitter and trending topics, but now I have confirmation. The question is why is such a large percentage of the Twitter population African American? There are a few conclusions that can be drawn here based on similar research.
The mobile arena is blowing up and blacks and Hispanics are at the forefront of this growth. 55% of Americans connect to the Internet wirelessly and, out of that 55%, 59% are Black/Non-Hispanic. Black people and other minority groups are just generally more likely to access the Internet via some type of mobile device. Taking that into consideration, Twitter is just about the most mobile-friendly social networking application out there.
Even if you don’t have a data plan, you can still use Twitter via SMS. I know many black households that may not have a computer or may not have broadband Internet access, but they definitely have cell phones in the home. Mobile devices solve the general problem of phone communications as well as providing basic Internet access to social media and business applications.
Another major factor is how quickly black celebrities have taken to Twitter as compared to white celebs. You have people like Ashton Kutcher going hard and promoting the service, but it seems there are many more black celebrities with active Twitter accounts. This includes musicians, athletes, actors, and organizations. It probably doesn’t hurt that Obama himself, the first black president of the US, popularized the service during and after his successful campaign.
According to this same report, Twitter is most popular among the 25 to 34 year old crowd. The median age for blacks or African Americans is about 31 while the median age for whites is about 40 according to the 2006 census. This means that blacks are younger on average and also mostly fall directly in the middle of the group that has the most interest in Twitter.
One last point is that Twitter users tend to be not only more educated, but more wealthy. On a related note, higher income African Americans are the fastest growing segment of web users. You have educated and wealthy black people getting online in droves. Even lower income blacks, while they may not have broadband at home, are still able to access Twitter on their mobile devices. At the same time, most of these people are right in the sweet spot for people being interested in Twitter and many of the celebs they follow are already on the service asking them to join.
I know many have seen this and have some strong opinions on the subject, so I encourage you to share them here. What reasons can you think of as to why so many black people are on Twitter? What are they doing with it?
via SFGate