Emarketer has an interesting post up , tying together two pieces of research around Twitter. The piece can basically be summarised as follows: Almost everyone has heard of Twitter, but few use it.
The two stats that make that point are as follows. First of all we have Pew Research's figures, showing that 13% of the US Internet population now uses Twitter - it is worth noting that in the Autumn of 2010, the figure was 8%, so that represents an impressive growth rate.
However, against that is research from Arbitron and Edison Research showing that 92% are aware of it (also Arbitron and Edison still put Twitter penetration at 8% of the Internet population). Compare that to Facebook, where 57% of American Internet users (and the % is similar in the UK), have a profile.
When I first tweeted about the Emarketer piece, Wessel van Rensburg of RAAK made a good point - does this awareness vs usage gap actually matter. The answer is yes and no.
First of all, the fact that everyone is aware of Twitter is significant.
Though the Arbitron / Edison research concerned the US, Twitter's role in circumventing court injunctions in the UK, means awareness has almost certainly shot up here too. Twitter saw its most popular UK day ever last month, yet at the same time I wonder whether Comscore's stat showing that 12.9% of the UK Internet population uses it has changed much.
The point is, it is almost irrelevant whether it is a mass tool or not. The fact is, it is on the overall popular radar.
Secondly, 13% penetration is quite high. And if we assume that Twitter's real, regular worldwide user base is 20+ million people (as opposed to 200+ million accounts), that is still a very large group of people who can still spread, amplify and create news
Related to that, the big number in social media isn't everything.
Just about everyone reading this post will know this, but it is worth saying again. Online engagement and influence are more important than reach. For example, Foursquare's ten million registered user base (ie the real number is lower), doesn't sound that impressive. Until you consider that Radio Shack worked out that those Foursquare users spend 3.5x as much as other customers.
Twitter will never be Facebook, they have different roles and users apply them differently.. And so perhaps there is cause to stop comparing the two side by side.