Twitter is 40% ‘Pointless Babble’: Report
Twitter followers are more likely to hear about what people are having for their lunch than read anything actually interesting or worthwhile, according to Pear Analytics.
Less than one in ten tweets have any real "pass-along value" and more than 40 percent of tweets are “pointless babble,” a study by the research firm showed.
The research carried out by Pear Analytics was designed to take a snapshot of what people actually used the booming social networking site for.
They delved into the endless steam of tweets every 30 minutes between 11 am and 5 pm Central Standard time on weekdays over two weeks to collect a total of 2,000 messages.
They then grouped the messages into one of six categories: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and those with pass-along value.
Messages classed as babble included such gems as “I’m having a sandwich,” Pear Analytics said.
Only 8.7 percent of messages were found to have pass-along value. Pointless babble was the largest category with 40.5 percent. Conversational tweets were 37.5 percent, but self promotion and spam only grabbed 5.9 percent and 3.8 percent respectively.
Fears that the site was becoming overrun with spam and self-promotion from companies getting on the Twitter bandwagon were refuted by the findings, Pear Analytics said.
"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," Ryan Kelly, founder of Pear Analytics, said of the findings.