Half of U.S. adult Twitter users consume news on the platform

November 5, 2013 Leave a comment

Half of U.S. adult Twitter users consume news on the platform

2:11pm EST

By Jennifer Saba

(Reuters) – About half of all adult Twitter users in the United States said they get news through the social media platform, mainly on mobile devices, according to a new survey. The report by the Pew Research Center in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation was released on Monday. The results are based on a the survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults including Twitter and Facebook users.Twitter users who consume news on the platform – defined as information about events and issues that involve more than just family or friends – represent only 8 percent of the U.S. adult population.

Almost half of all U.S. adults on Facebook use the social media platform founded by Mark Zuckerberg to consume news as well, according to a study from the Pew Research Center released two weeks ago. But that group represent nearly one-third of all U.S. adults.

Twitter has about 200 million users worldwide, while Facebook has 1 billion.

The survey also underscores how young people consume news because almost half of Twitter news users are between the ages of 18 and 29.

Breaking news or topics of interest can explode on Twitter with millions of tweets covering events ranging from the Newtown, Connecticut shootings to the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage.

Twitter just named NBC News digital executive Vivian Schiller as head of news to act as a liaison between Twitter and news organizations.

The network known for short messages of up to 140 characters is preparing to make one of the most closely watched initial public offerings later this week. It raised the price range for its IPO by 25 percent earlier on Monday, valuing the company at up to $13.6 billion.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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