Pear Analytics has released a report that purports to show how people are using Twitter. Although there does seem to be a lot of interesting information about when you can find the most news updates and when certain types of usage peaks, everyone has focused on the fact that nearly 40% of all tweets have fallen into a category Pear categorized as pointless babble. Of the other categories Pear coded, conversation came up close behind, with news, spam, self-promotion, and pass-along value (messages that had been Re-Tweeted) trailing far behind.
Needless to say there was a lot of buzz over the Babble moniker. One of the surveyors followed up in the comments over on Mashable with an expanded definition of this category:
“Babble” was categorized as any tweet that was a) not talking to anyone specific; or b) does not have a RT or #ff, etc.; c) was not a news item; d) not spam; and e) generally useless information, such as “I’m sitting on my deck right now”.
Pear’s decision to give this broad category a decidedly heated category title feels a little like trying to grab a headline. What they have chosen to call useless is the standard status update, which is the lifeblood of most social media platforms. As many posters have pointed out, although these messages have no specific call to action, they are precisely the standard conversation starters that create new and unexpected conversations. Sometimes, there is a conversation going on within a large group that does not include single conversations – or, if they are, it is happening in direct messages which Pear could not track.
Again, the analogy I like to use for Twitter, that is is most like a cocktail party, still stands – there are hundreds of discussions on any given feed. Many are pleasantries, cordial how-do-you-dos, and light conversation. That isn’t to say they don’t have merit – they build rapport and common understanding among individuals and build friendships. And, in the end, if that is their final result, is that really a bad thing?
Links
MASHABLE –> TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble
