Filed under: Web services, web 2.0, Op-Ed, Microblogging
Firm reports Twitter is 40% useless babble. We're 0% surprised.
Pear Analytics asks on their website, "Have you measured the impact of social media on your brand?" Apparently that's what they do. And they've been busily analyzing what goes on over at Twitter.
The super shocking results: just over 40% of tweets qualify as "pointless babble." Following in second place are "conversational" updates, at 37.5%.
Their findings are based on 2,000 tweets. Surely they must know what a small sample that amounts to - that's like a single hock in the Twitter spittoon. Regardless, what's the big deal here?
If you asked me how much of my Twitter stream is social white noise (which is what I'd expect a fancy social analytics firm to call it) I would probably say "about half." There's not really a need to analyze it. On top of that, it pretty much mimics what I experience in meatspace on a daily basis. People just love to talk about nothing.
Twitter is many things, but tops on the list are 1) a haven for self-promoting social media douchebags and 2) a place to post things you don't give a crap whether anyone cares about.
I guess I should be thankful. Finally, some rock-solid empirical data to prove what everyone with half a brain has been thinking about Twitter all along.
Go us!
The super shocking results: just over 40% of tweets qualify as "pointless babble." Following in second place are "conversational" updates, at 37.5%.
Their findings are based on 2,000 tweets. Surely they must know what a small sample that amounts to - that's like a single hock in the Twitter spittoon. Regardless, what's the big deal here?
If you asked me how much of my Twitter stream is social white noise (which is what I'd expect a fancy social analytics firm to call it) I would probably say "about half." There's not really a need to analyze it. On top of that, it pretty much mimics what I experience in meatspace on a daily basis. People just love to talk about nothing.
Twitter is many things, but tops on the list are 1) a haven for self-promoting social media douchebags and 2) a place to post things you don't give a crap whether anyone cares about.
I guess I should be thankful. Finally, some rock-solid empirical data to prove what everyone with half a brain has been thinking about Twitter all along.
Go us!
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The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Todd said 2:15PM on 8-13-2009
That's better than Fox News' 100% useless babble ( TV and website )!
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Jash Sayani said 2:17PM on 8-13-2009
Twitter is not useless. Well, it depends on the use. You can follow CNN News and get latest news updates or follow tech blogs like DownloadSquad or TUAW and get latest tech updates.
But yes, there are useless ways of using twitter. So it actually depends...
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Tony Montana said 2:47PM on 8-13-2009
Twitter is going downhill very fast.
When it first came up it was an awesome source of information and science and technology.
There were a lot of thoughtful but obscure articles that were given the light of day through Twitter.
Now that Twitter has become more popular the science and technology articles have been replaced by drivel.
Whereas once the biggest discussions on the website were things like nanotechnology and 65nm processors nowadays the trending subjects are "The Fast and the Furious" and "Miley Cyprus".
I'd say less than 3% of the content on Twitter is actually good with the rest being a bunch of useless bs.
Still though as mentioned above websites like DownloadSquad and TUAW are signed up on twitter and there is a decent science community on Twitter too with some pretty good blogs.
The social white noise as you call it and the spam account for the vast majority of what Twitter has to offer though.
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HJ said 3:13PM on 8-13-2009
I think its pretty arrogant of you to think just because it doesn't interest you its automatically drivel. Hey I'm no fan of Miley Cyrus either but so what if its on trending topics a lot? Its like complaning "Paris Hilton" is one of the most searched terms on Google.
Tony if you like tweets about science and technology all you have to do is follow people that talk and link to articles about it, and type in the terms that interest you on twitter search. Its that simple, its you're choice whether you want to be exposed to the in your words 97% of twitter that is bs. Why should the fact twitter users are talking about topics like Miley Cyrus or Fast and the Furious bother you? Its only reflective of the internet as a whole.
I also think its hilarious you mention DownloadSquad on twitter as a example of the few bright spots on twitter. *eyeroll* I personally find the twitter feeds with just headlines of articles from the website to be the most pointless of all.
Tony Montana said 3:26PM on 8-13-2009
On Twitter millions of subjects are discussed on a daily basis and the only way to get to the hot topics is to search for trending topics.
When there was a strong science and technology community there it was really interesting because you could learn about various subjects that were popular at the time.
If you took a look at trending topics nowadays its pretty hard to cut through the junk and find topics that you are unaware of but are educational or interesting from a science or technology perspective.
When Miley Cyprus takes precedence over most things it really shows how fickle the community on Twitter has become and its a lot more difficult navigating through the pop culture junk to get to something worth reading.
Obviously the problem is if Miley Cyprus is over shadowing science and technology blogs they just won't bother signing up to Twitter. After all most tech and science sites use to rely on Twitter for traffic so they could make a little money on advertising.
The problem is science and technology websites are trying to tailor more towards the general demographic of Twitter to try and get more readers and things are being dumbed down significantly.
Twitter feeds are useful when you are out and about actually. I mean if you don't own a smart phone you can't get RSS feeds to your phone in any real convenient way.
With Twitter its as easy as pie.
HJ said 3:00PM on 8-13-2009
Seriously? I expected more than a cheapshot with no thoughtful analysis. Who are they labeling it as "pointless babble". I mean not doubt there are some that are pointless babble but mundane things like "I'm eating a sandwich" or "Just fed the cat" can be pretty valuable if say its a mother reading about her son's first days at camp or something like that.
"Self promoting social media douchebags"? What the hell does that even mean? If a person has something to say and people are interested enough to read why is that wrong? How is that self-promotion? Do most tweeters go "Hey look at me!! I'm important listen to me!!" in your experience?
I also find it laughable people are still spewing the same "twitter is lame" type of stuff when its proven to be useful in so many ways. I mean just yesterday I saw a headline about people using it as a neighborhood watch, or what about how Iranians used it in regards to the election there?
Click on "NHS" and tell me how pointless that is.
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seriousam7 said 6:02AM on 8-14-2009
But...Twitter *is* lame.
Josh said 5:19PM on 8-13-2009
Hahaha! Simply wanted to say that your headline was one of the best I've read in a while! Definitely made me laugh out loud.
Whether useful or pointless, I'm sure Twitter would come around if we all just cooled down. Do that, and I'd be 0% surprised that it actually sustains itself, usefully. :)
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John Burke said 6:13PM on 8-13-2009
I'm pretty sure that almost all of my tweets are pretty much useless, so this doesn't really surprise me all that much.
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Michael K Pate said 9:08AM on 8-14-2009
I can't believe no one quoted Sturgeon...
"Ninety percent of everything is crap."
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Paul-PA said 8:02AM on 8-15-2009
Flip-side: If it's 60% "useful", doesn't that put Twitter way ahead of the internet as a whole?
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Julianne said 2:40PM on 8-26-2009
I think it was a catchy title, and it did exactly what it wanted. It drew attention to it, no one had even heard of that marketing company before they tweeted their study. Now it is all over the place.
http://hunchfree.com/blog/
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Richard Clark Marketing Blog said 6:51PM on 9-22-2009
I have seen a number of articles and a high volume of commentary on this very subject. As one of the other commenters stated, due to the high volume of topics and posts placed on Twitter every day, it is inevitable a proportion will be irrelevant to some recipients. Surely, if you are sensitive to the messages you receive you need to be selective over who you follow.
I have noticed the increase recently in spam posts, promising 10m followers in 5 minutes or asking me to join their mafia gang. Those are pointless and in general those people are unfollowed very quickly.
I still find Twitter extremely useful to keep up to date with general topics as well as a great aggregator for blog posts and articles relating to e-Commerce and Internet Marketing.
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