Twitter is as well known as its Facebook but trails considerably in terms of usage.

Edison Research found that awareness of Twitter has exploded from 5% of Americans in 2008 to 87% in 2010. By comparison, Facebook’s awareness is at 88%.

In fact, as only 85% of Americans have internet access, more people are aware of Twitter than could possibly use the service, which is likely is due to traditional media saturation, with many mainstream television, radio and print media outlets prominently highlighting their Twitter accounts throughout the course of their programming.

Despite equal awareness, Twitter trails Facebook significantly in usage: 7% of Americans (17m persons) actively use Twitter, while 41% maintain a profile page on Facebook.

That gap is only going to grow if our story yesterday is anything to go by — after a whopping 50, 000 sites took up the “Like” button in a week.

Nearly two-thirds of active Twitter users access social networking sites using a mobile phone, with one in five regular Twitter users updates the service via mobile phone several times per day, while one in three do so at least daily.

Twitter itself appears to see further growth with mobile access, as seen with its recent acquisition of SMS technology provider Cloudhopper.

The survey also found that 51% of Twitter users are following a brand or company, a percentage three times higher than similar behaviour expressed by social networking users in general.