A large number of messages posted on Twitter are ‘pointless babble’ according to a new study. The research, from US firm Pear Analytics, examined how people use the micro-blogging platform. The market research firm found 40.5% of Tweets could be classified as “pointless babble”, 37.5% as “conversational” and 8.7% as having “pass-along value”, classed as […]
A large number of messages posted on Twitter are ‘pointless babble’ according to a new study. The research, from US firm Pear Analytics, examined how people use the micro-blogging platform. The market research firm found 40.5% of Tweets could be classified as “pointless babble”, 37.5% as “conversational” and 8.7% as having “pass-along value”, classed as news of interest. Self promotion and spam stood at 5.85% and 3.75% respectively.
“With the new face of Twitter, it will be interesting to see if they take a heavier role in news, or continue to be a source for people to share their current activities that have little to do with everyone else,” said Ryan Kelly, founder of Pear Analytics, writing about its analysis.
Methodology
Pear Analytics checked the Tweet stream every 30 minutes between 11:00 and 17:00 on weekdays for a fortnight. In total it grabbed 2,000 messages and then put each message it grabbed into one of six categories; news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and those with pass-along value.
Source: Pear Analytics
18/08/2009
