It has been reported by the BBC that Pear Analytics ( an American Marketing Company) have concluded 40% of twitter messages are pointless babble.
It is encouraging to see that businesses are conducting research into Twitter and facebook and their validity as Social Media tools for Businesses and, indeed, individuals.
There are a number of important points which must be noted from this research considered when looking at this research.
* The research was taken from a sample of 2000 "tweets" between set hours over a two week period. The average number of "tweets" broadcast per day is 1.9 MILLION. This totals 26.6MILLION tweets actually being broadcast in the same period.
The sample of 2000 tweets is therefore less that 0.1% of all twitter posts which go out. The conclusion that 40% of all twitter posts are "pointless babble" are based on a sample less that 0.1% of total twitter messages during the two week period.
* The research, furthermore undertaken between 11:00 and 17:00 on weekdays for a fortnight in the US. Therefore the time difference between countries could have been afactor in the quality of posts sampled.
* Whilst businesses, companies, the BBC and twitter users forwarded and "re-tweeted" this discovery, it is interesting to note that all companies involved in reporting and conducting research are still avid twitter users!
* The research by Pear Analytics also concluded that 37% of messages were conversational. This has been overlooked in some reports, but sure this is great news? ! One of the points of twitter and facebook especially in business are to create conversations about you and your brand.
The important message here is that whilst studies into usage of twitter are encouraging, they need to be read and analysed properly to ensure that they are relevant to us as readers.
It will be interesting to see further results that Pear Analytics generate as they are intending to continue the studies and repeat these every quarter.
So true. Journalists are well known for not being able to 'read' numbers or statistics with any accuracy. They seem to want to take a number and then fit the words to it that builds the story.
Yes I know building a story is what a journalist does but does it have to be such a fiction :-)
Posted by: Mark Barton | 09/19/2009 at 01:54 PM