I have seen this headline circulating over the last week on Twitter and the blogs and so I decided that I would have a closer look at it.
“Twitter Study Reveals Interesting results about Usage..40% are Pointless Babble” by Pear Analytics
Well this is my take on this “Headline” and its eye catching emotive perspective. (by the way it is a good headline.. and it received a lot of attention and achieved great traction in social media mentions)
Guess what ..sounds like a normal share of typical “conversations” we have as human beings everyday.. some are deep and meaningful.. we pass some information along, we have some news to share and we also talk a bit about nothing in particular”
Like!
- “Honey.. I am taking the dog for a walk”
- “Hey..just popping down to the shop to get a paper”
- “Went to gym tonite”
- “Watched a great movie on the weekend”
- Does my bum look big in this?
Isn’t Web 2.0 about 2 way conversations?.. comments.. passing on information, some news and hey maybe a bit of self promotion slips into the conversation from time to time.
So here are the statistics from the Twitter Pear Study, August 2009
- Total News 3.6%
- Total Spam 3.75%
- Total Self Promotion 5.75%
- Total Pointless Babble 40.55%
- Total Conversational 37.55%
- Total Pass along Value 8.7%
Note: Notice the use of “Total” why not use “News” instead of “Total News” It must have been written by marketing .. or was it the PR Department?
So if we add together… News, Conversational, Pass Along and a bit of Self Promotion we have 56% of normal interesting and typical conversations on “Twitter” that would seem to closely parallel what we as normal human beings experience everyday.
What do you think? “Is Twitter Dysfunctional?” or does it just reflect and mirror what we as humans experience as normal everyday?