By Ronald W. Weathersby

Twitter was founded in 2006 and now claims tens of millions of users around the globe. According to a demographic survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project 83 percent of Internet users ages 18 to 29 use social media. Pew also found that among black Internet users, 26 percent use Twitter compared to 14 percent of whites 19 percent of Hispanics. In August 2011 the same survey found that 18 percent of African Americans used Twitter.

“Both of those groups, African-American and Latino adult Internet users in the U.S., tend to be younger than white Internet users, which helps to lead to their adoption of Twitter,” Senior Research Specialist Aaron Smith told the BBC. “Both of those groups are also very mobile populations in their use of cell phones in particular to access the web and Twitter lends itself easily to mobile technology.”

The survey also concluded that non-whites are more likely than white cell phone owners to do a range of non-voice tasks on their cell phones – they are more likely to use instant messaging and social networking on their phones. The study also suggested those who live in cities and were more likely to use the social networking site – which lets users post updates using up to 140 characters.

The popularity of Twitter among blacks in American is surging and Nashville native, Brittani Watkins, an IT Analyst says the platform works better for her than traditional social media like Facebook.

“I’ve been on Twitter since 2010,” the Whites Creek High School graduate said. “I use Twitter to keep up with my friends and what’s going on. I check the local news stations and I also use it to let people know what I’m doing.”

“I found that I can put stuff on Twitter that I can’t put up on Facebook. There are different people on Facebook. My grandma’s on Facebook.”

So, Watkins explained that as the older generation has joined Facebook, her generation is using Twitter more.

“I planned an event last year,” Watkins explained. “I posted it on Facebook and asked people to RSVP. About half of them didn’t show up and I put up a message to them on my Facebook page. Well I got responses from my elders who said I shouldn’t be so negative. I don’t have to worry about them reading my Tweets. Twitter is a way for us to communicate without our elders seeing it.”

She also said that Twitter is more instantaneous and current that Facebook.

“I can have multiple conversations at one time and your conversations are ongoing.”

Wayne Sutton, a social-media consultant and blogger at SocialWayne.com, says Twitter enables “a level playing field in getting (black Americans’) voices heard.”

“With the history of our culture, we now have an equal channel like anyone else,” he told USA Today. “We are also some of the largest consumers of entertainment and sports. And that’s a lot of what is said on social media by us.”

Researchers found that 25 percent of active Twitter users checked the service several times a day. As Americans spend more of their time online, social networking technology as a whole is growing and starting to replace activities individuals once performed in physical spaces. The Pew researchers noted in the report that they focused on Twitter because the service was “one of the most popular online activities among tech enthusiasts and has become a widely used tool among analysts to study the conversations and interests of users, buzz about news, products or services.”

Now there is a Twitter group for African Americans. According to Soraya Nadia McDonald, “If you haven’t yet experienced the glory of Black Twitter, you are late to the party. There’s no password. The only entry fee is knowledge. If you’ve spent time steeped in black culture, whether at a historically black college or university or in the company of friends or family, you will probably understand the references on Black Twitter.”

“To me, Black Twitter is essentially an extension of my black urban experience,” Michael Arceneaux told the Washington Post, “It’s a bunch of people like me. Black people in major cities and it’s basically six degrees of separation. I might not know you, but I might have a friend of a friend of a friend who does.”

Twitter was utilized during the Arab Spring to organize and inform activists and the public at large and McDonald writes that Black Twitter helped squash a book deal for Juror B37, who planned to write her account of the George Zimmerman trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida. A protest initiated on Black Twitter resulted in a grassroots campaign and within hours the juror released a statement saying the book deal was off.

“Perhaps the most significant contribution of Black Twitter is that it increases visibility of black people online, and in doing so, dismantles the idea that white is standard and everything else is “other,”” writes McDonald. “It’s a radical demand for acceptance by simply existing — or sometimes dominating — in a space and being yourself, without apology or explanation.”