For all other commentators and I raise expectations of great things from Twitter, it has not yet made the big breakthrough to popularity in numbers.  Not that 20 million subscribers is puny!  But research published today by the Center for Media Research (based on a Harris poll) indicates Twitter is still reaching a small proportion of the audience, even among the 18 – 34 year old early adopters.

While 74% of the 18 – 34 group report having a Facebook or MySpace account, only 8% of them subscribe to Twitter and just 4% use it to send messages.  Twitter use to send messages is actually a bit higher among 35 – 44 year olds, at 5%, but the use of it drops to 1% or less for everyone over 45.

I still think Twitter will prove to be a game changer.  I don’t think it’s primarily a communication tool, however, which is what Facebook is.  It is a news source, and a search tool.  And as it grows (OK, if it grows) it will gather enough volume to allow specialized conversations about narrow topics of intense interest to any number of groups.  General news will spread virally among the groups through their interconnections, and search tools will capture information about queries in almost real time.

At some point, nobody will tweet about what they had for breakfast.  But they will report interesting things to people who care about the same things.

In an interesting bit of research recently published, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that Internet participation has been increasing across ALL generations.  No surprise, the younger you are the more likely you go online using more channels (there’s a lot more 20-somethings at MySpace than there are older boomers).  But important to note that age is almost irrelevant to some kinds of online activities, like researching products:  all ages do that at about the same rate.

In other words, SEARCH and using online resources to learn about products and services is so common at all ages that it is a MUST for marketers no matter what you are marketing.

Greg Sterling over at Search Engine Land posted some nice graphics about Pew’s Generations Online project.  I’ll share a couple tidbits here, but you might want to check it out.

It wasn’t surprising to me that the Gen X (ages 33-44) and younger Boomers (ages 45-54) make up a big chunk of the adult Internet population (45% of it between them), although the younger Gen Y group is proportionally larger (ages 18-32 with 30%).  And it wasn’t too surprising to see the pattern of certain Internet activities across these generations:  the younger you are the more likely to play online games, use social networking sites, or create a blog.

But what was a little surprising, and encouraging, was that for some activities, there is very little difference in participation rates across generations.  94% of Gen Y use email; 91% of the Silent Generation (ages 64-72) do.  90% of Gen Y use search engines; 85% of Silent.  65% of Gen Y makes online travel reservations; Silent: 69%.  Research products online:  Gen Y – 84%; Silent – 73%.

You get the picture.  Why it matters is this:  the activities that are most likely to lead to sales are common across generations.  Until we get a better handle on how to use all the social sharing, social networking, social news sites out there for marketing products, this will probably continue to be true.  And the change toward social media marketing is not going to be an easy road — the participants in those networks are sophisticated about their independence, and they (mostly) do not want direct marketing appeals.

We are left with limited options for social media marketing.  One important avenue is brand development.  Companies that operate in niches where they can have an impact via brand can benefit from participating in social media.

Of course, then they have to actually participate actively and faithfully, and that’s another story.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch reported yesterday that Facebook is now twice the size of MySpace worldwide, measured by monthly unique visitors. MySpace is still #1 in the U.S., but extrapolating the traffic data predicts that Facebook will overtake it sometime later this year.  Facebook’s registered users has been growing explosively.

However, MySpace users also used their social network much more intensively.  According to socialmedia blog, MySpace users spent 17.5 billion minutes online compared with 9.3 billion minutes for Facebook, generating 40 billion pageviews compared with Facebook’s 18 billion.

Anyway you look at it, these are staggering numbers.  MySpace claims it is succeeding in monetizing this traffic, while Facebook continues to push for user growth.  For me, the more interesting thing is how these giants will push my world around.  We already know that social media generate the huge buzz we depend on for ‘viral’ marketing with content syndication and links between publishers (see the two above?).  But how is that going to affect the core function of search in the online world?

I don’t think Google is worried.  But search functions can become a lot more specialized.  Think about looking for real time insights into a developing event:  wouldn’t you search Twitter?

Here’s another worthwhile Techcrunch post, this time about how Twitter gets the Audience idea right. The post is by Gregor Hochmuth.

I have my own ideas about why Twitter works, but I’ll save them for another post. The one by Hochmuth gets to much the same point: In Twitter, you have connections to a known group of people, and you can get a message to them whenever you want to. No filtering, and no anonymity (at least in the public stream). Hochmuth’s post is a good analysis comparing Twitter with Facebook and Friendfeed as to how they connect with Audience. That’s an important idea for a marketer to think about.