There Are Three Kinds Of Lies: Lies, Damned Lies, And Twitter Statistics
A big deal is being made about a study by US market research firm Pear Analytics, which claims that 40 per cent of the messages sent via Twitter are “pointless babble”.
The firm plucked 2000 tweets every 30 minutes over a two-week period and then classified them in six different categories: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and those with ‘pass-along’ value.
(Download the entire whitepaper in PDF format here.)
40.5 per cent rated as pointless babble, of the “I’m eating a sandwich” variety, taking Twitter’s ‘What are you doing?’ request too literally.
37.5 per cent were seen to be conversational, with only 5.85 per cent and 3.75 per cent rating as self-promotional or spam (respectively), which countered Pear’s expectations.
The really interesting stat is the tweets that made up the pass-along category – 8.7 per cent. These were considered to have value because they were being retweeted by others.
Everybody is focusing on the bigger numbers, particularly the babble count. But this is looking at it backwards. When held up against the offline, ‘real’ world – and particularly other social networks, such as Facebook and Myspace – Twitter’s 40 per cent inanity rating is almost certainly incredibly low. Be honest: are 60 per cent of all the conversations you have of genuine, measurable value? If the number is as high as five per cent, you must be involved in something pretty special.
Meantime, if almost ten per cent of all the things you say to others are worth repeating, are quotable, you’re not only doing it right, you’re in very rare company indeed. Mark Twain wishes he had the good fortune to be quite so talented.
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Some people need to face the fact that Twitter is the food court of the internet.
I’m amazed and amused every time I read some blog post somewhere (and yes, some of them have been yours) worrying about how we can back up our tweets or whether they’re copyright-protected or what we would ever do if some of them disappeared. But we’re just sitting in the food court, chattering.
Sure, sometimes a great idea comes to someone in the food court, but if one comes to you, you’d better write it down, because no one else is going to. Sometimes we have serious talk about politics or religion or that girl over there and whether she should have worn that to the mall. Sometimes it’s babble. As you point out, there’s a fairly low signal to noise ratio anywhere two or more people get together. Especially in the food court.
Anyway, 40% of studies are “pointless babble,” too.
.-= Levi Montgomery´s last blog ..The 5-Day Give Away, Version 09.09 =-.
Indeed. With regard to the backup facility, (as I’ve said) it’s less about feeling my contributions to Twitter have some great value that needs to be protected, and more that I don’t like the idea that if the very worst happens and I (and others) lose everything, that I have to start over from scratch. Nor do I like to make the assumption that Twitter already has a backup process. If I’m responsible, then I’m responsible, and I only have myself to blame if it all goes bye-bye. I’ve invested a lot of time in Twitter, and whereas the value of a given tweet is extremely negligible, the overall package has some worth, if only to me.
I must admit, it just struck me that rebuilding my network would be a pain. Now you’ve gone and worried me!
.-= Levi Montgomery´s last blog ..The 5-Day Give Away, Version 09.09 =-.
FYI. This study has also reached the front page of a major Dutch news website (internet section). Mainly because the BBC had an article about it last monday.