Further to my colleague Paul Verna’s post today about the smartphone factor in Twitter usage, I wanted to mention one of the key findings of my recently released “Mobile Social Networks: Marketing by Location Shows Potential” report (full version of the report available here for Total Access subscribers only):

From a usage perspective, mobile users are starting to access social networks with an even greater frequency than PC users, offering a glimpse into a possible future for other online content and media.

The report points to smartphones as the force behind this emerging usage pattern, noting that the contrast in levels of social networking activity between smartphone and non-smartphone users can be dramatic. Just to give a sense, according to comScore, smartphone users in the US indexed five times higher than non-smartphone users in terms of accessing social networking sites or blogs, while in the EU-5, smartphone owners indexed at approximately triple the rate of non-smartphone users for social networking activity.

Twitter is clearly an important destination among mobile social networkers (it figures in the top three, after Facebook and MySpace). That said, the Crowd Science study that my colleague Debbie Williamson referenced in her recent post also indicates that the majority (85%) of Twitter users around the world still prefer to access the service from their PCs. Only 8% mostly or exclusively use a mobile device and an additional 8% shift back and forth between the two environments.

Factoring in age (specifically, youth) may shed additional light on the impact that devices have on social networking behavior. For example, among the US Internet users surveyed by consumer electronics shopping site Retrevo, 46% of those under 35 named their mobile phone as their preferred device for accessing Facebook, nearly matching the 54% who opted for their PC. By comparison, 81% of those over 35 preferred to use their PC.

Granted, Facebook and Twitter are not the same thing, even if there is undoubtedly significant overlap in the audiences for both sites. However, extrapolating from the relevant data from these studies may help to define the where, when, why and how behind shifting social network usage patterns. What’s your experience?