Despite what the media and marketing industry use micro-blogging site Twitter for, new research suggests that users are more interested in using the social network to keep in touch with friends more than anything else.
A new study from the Consumer Internet Barometer and TNS has found that 41.6% of Twitter users use the site to keep in touch with their friends.
In addition, 29.1% used it to update their status, 25.8% to find news and stay updated, 21.7% for work purposes and 9.4% for research.
While the study found that men and women both used Twitter primarily to keep in touch with friends, men were interested in finding news and women in updating their status.
Users under age 35 were more interested in broadcasting their status than their senior counterparts. Older users were more likely to use the service for work-related purposes.
The average Twitter user interacted primarily with friends and family. Next-most-popular reasons for using the social network were to keep tabs on celebrities, bloggers, TV shows, co-workers, brands and journalists.
Older users trailed younger ones in interaction with every Twitter user type except journalists and brands.
Twitter users are also more interested in sex than, say your average Facebook user, according to recent study from Anderson Analytics. The average age of Twitter user is 35.
The micro-blogging site is now the third most used social network based on its count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits.