Study: Twitter is little more than 'Pointless Babble'

by Stevie Smith - Aug 17 2009, 15:30

While there’s little doubting the sudden surge of popularity powering the rise of Twitter, a new usage and content study has revealed that much of the communication being posted by users of the micro-blogging service amounts to little more than “pointless babble.”

The two-week study, conducted by marketing intelligence specialist Pear Analytics, assessed 2,000 ‘tweets’ on the site across content categories such as Conversational, News, Pass-Along Value, Pointless Babble, Self-Promotion and Spam.

According to Pear’s findings, some 40.55 percent of all tweets (brief messages limited to 140 characters in length) consisted of largely useless information – usually the kind of everyday banality that would see Twitter users informing their ‘followers’ of what they’ve just eaten for lunch, bought from the local shop, or watched on the TV.

Other contributing stats uncovered by the study revealed that around 37 percent of tweets were written as part of an ongoing conversation (much like a session of mobile phone text messaging), while around nine percent of activity contained pass-along value.

Tweets of a self-promotional value accounted for six percent of usage, while Spam and news content both chipped in with a further four percent each.

“We thought the news category would have more weight than dead last, since this seems to be contrary to Twitter’s new position of being the premier source of news and events,” outlined the report.

“We did not predict that conversational (category) would be as high as it was, or that self-promotion was going to be as low as it was,” it added.

While current trends suggest Twitter is, in the main, a hive of useless information that appeals only to the individuals actually composing and distributing specific content, Pear Analytics is keen to point out that category percentages will shift (for the better?) as the service increases its market traction.

“As Twitter continues to evolve, not only as a brand but from a user’s perspective, it is likely that the usage patterns will change,” the company advised.

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