The Outage Aftermath: Louie Swisher Hearts Facebook, but Twitter Not So Much
by Kara Swisher
Posted on August 7, 2009 at 1:37 PM PT
Like grandmother, like grandson.
Yesterday, I told my No. 1 son, Louie, that Twitter was down, after a denial-of-service attack.
He was–shall we say–not very sympathetic, as you can see in the video below.
Interestingly, Louie’s response was similar to my mother’s, Lucretia Carney, who mocked the San Francisco-based microblogging service at a gas station on the way to my interview with its founders at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference (see her video below too, as I continue to use my poor family as props in interviews).
It’s just anecdotal, of course, but it turns out their opinions actually track on several recent reports, the latest coming from Nielsen.
It showed that the 25-and-under crowd is definitely not the group adding to the site’s tremendous growth.
Using a panel of 250,000 U.S. Internet users, the data (which you can see above–click on the image to make it larger) said that there are fewer young people on Twitter than on the Web itself–16 percent versus 25 percent.
Older people, like my mother, are also a smaller group, at 20 percent of Twitter. The biggest and fastest-growing group on Twitter is 25 to 54, just like me, an obvious fan of the service.
An earlier anecdotal report from Morgan Stanley (MS) posited similar findings.
Facebook, of course, is hugely popular with young people. And, with Louie, who–even at the tender age of seven years old–wants me to set up an account now on the Silicon Valley-based social networking site, to be able to upload video, photos and more.
Check out his and my mother’s thoughts on the subject:
