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Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage – 40% is “Pointless Babble”

August 12th, 2009 by Ryan Kelly in Social Media

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A while back we embarked on a study that evolved after a having a debate in the office as to how people are using and consuming Twitter. Some felt it was their source of news and articles, others felt it was just a bunch of self-promotion with very few folks actually paying attention. But mostly, many people still perceive Twitter as just mindless babble of people telling you what they are doing minute-by-minute; as if you care they are eating a sandwich at the moment.  (See our last post on Twitter: Is Anyone Paying Attention?).

So we took 2,000 tweets from the public timeline (in English and in the US) over a 2-week period from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and captured tweets in half-hour increments. Then we categorized them into 6 buckets:

News, Spam, Self-Promotion, Pointless Babble, Conversational and Pass-Along Value.

See our entire whitepaper here.

Results

The results were interesting. As you may have guessed, Pointless Babble won with 40.55% of the total tweets captured; however, Conversational was a very close second at 37.55%, and Pass-Along Value was third (albeit a distant third) at 8.7% of the tweets captured.

Other Results

- 11:30a and Monday’s have the most frequent tweets with Pass-Along Value.  If you want something re-tweeted, try it at 11:30 in the morning, or try it on a Monday.  Maybe folks are feeling generous then.

- Spam seemed pretty consistent all day, everyday, but luckily was second-to-last on frequency.

- News seemed heavier at 2:00p and on Tuesday’s.  Note that we did not collect any tweets during the Michael Jackson news, in order not to skew the results.

- Conversational tweets were high between 2:00 and 4:00p throughout the study, and heaviest on Tuesdays.  Most people are busy on Monday catching up with work, so perhaps it takes until Tuesday to get into the swing of Twittering again.

Conclusion

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.  We will be conducting this same study every quarter to identify other trends in usage.

Since Twitter is still loaded with lots of babbling that not many of have time for, you should check out the Twitter filter, Philtro.  These guys can not only help you filter the noise, but will also be allowing you to store the tweets you are most interested in real soon.

See our entire whitepaper here.

Update – August 24, 2009

Please see this post on how we plan to continue analyzing Twitter behavior and usage.  We are looking for your feedback to make the next study even more insightful!

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Related Posts:

• Social Media: What Works, and What Doesn’t
• Social media power
• Is Twitter Growing at 1 Million New Accounts Per Week?
• Twitter Study Part 2 – Continuing the Conversation
• Changing the face of Twitter

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253 Responses

1. TumbleTech » TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble
   August 12th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

   [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

2. TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble | World News
   August 12th, 2009 at 7:09 pm

   [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

3. Tech News World » TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble
   August 12th, 2009 at 7:18 pm

   [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

4. Jeremiah Hoeyt
   August 12th, 2009 at 7:39 pm

   Very interesting results! I love concersation on Twitter, but I also use Twitter to get a few eyeballs on my blog, hopefully your first statistic will help me out with that a bit.

   Although, I must say that the amount of Tweets you captured is very tiny in comparison to the amount of chatter Twitter generates daily. Maybe a more intensive look at the public timeline next time?

5. Ryan Kelly
   August 12th, 2009 at 8:13 pm

   Hi Jeramiah,

   The sample was statistically significant, although we did limit it to 11a-5p (equivalent to 9a-6p from west coast to east cost in CST) and M-F. We read some other studies that said this was the most opportune time to be tweeting.

   Hope that helps.

6. Tweets Are Pointless | Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage | Pear Analytics
   August 12th, 2009 at 8:32 pm

   [...] at 37.55%, and Pass-Along Value was third (albeit a distant third) at 8.7% of the tweets captured. Read more Share and [...]

7. TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble - Programming Blog
   August 12th, 2009 at 8:38 pm

   [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

8. mahasti
   August 12th, 2009 at 8:41 pm

   Hi Ryan – I wonder if you can share any analysis of Twitter usage in terms of trending topics? Twitter has been my primary source of info about recent events in Iran. Sure, there’s some self-promotion (mostly porno stuff) and the rare babble. But most posts tagged as #iranelection #neda #gr88 #Ahmadinejad …consist of serious news and commentary. Is there any hard data on that topic?

9. mahasti
   August 12th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

   Ryan, Me again. On #Iranelection, I’d be most interested in data from May/Jun up to the present.

10. Twitter, MS, Yahoo, Hunch, and other boring news - The Downside
    August 12th, 2009 at 8:47 pm

    [...] Twittering: According to a study by Pear Analytics, 40% of Tweets are “Pointless Babble” with another 38% being [...]

11. Twitter content « Harish Vasudevan's Collection
    August 12th, 2009 at 9:04 pm

    [...] By HARISH VASUDEVAN Another enlightening post on the content of [...]

12. Martin Lessard
    August 12th, 2009 at 9:16 pm

    Thanks, I’m impressed by the white paper quality. Nice work. I’m wondering if joining conversational and RT categories would have shown a better views of Twitter uasge (all together it sums up to 46%, before Pointless Babble.)

    That said, Pointless babble seems a misc. catagory, because it inclues twwets with ‘no context’. Let me explain: the last tweet of a user that says “I’m drinking a mixture” should qualify as worthy information if signed by Socrate . Or, more seriously, “I’m two block away” might qualify for conversational category if it had been send to a group of friends waiting for the user…

    Qualifing Babble as Pointlesscould be seen as brash judgement. Would ‘Contextlessness Babble’ more appropriate?

    My 2-cents

13. Stav Prodromou (stav) 's status on Thursday, 13-Aug-09 01:30:51 UTC - Identi.ca
    August 12th, 2009 at 9:30 pm

    [...] http://www.pearanalytics.com/2009/twitter-study-reveals-interesting-results-about-usage/ [...]

14. TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble | Stoth
    August 12th, 2009 at 9:47 pm

    [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

15. Affiliates Blog » TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble
    August 12th, 2009 at 10:03 pm

    [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

16. TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble | Techdare
    August 12th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

17. MacSmiley
    August 12th, 2009 at 10:19 pm

    What constitutes “pointless babble” ??

18. Without Comment: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble « The Coalitionist
    August 12th, 2009 at 10:33 pm

    [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. As somewhat of a redemption for our narcissistic oversharing ways, conversational tweets came in a very close second with 37.55%. Pass-along value — or RTs — captured third-place with only 8.7%, but, thankfully, spam only accounted for 3.75% of all tweets studied. [...]

19. ResourceShelf » Blog Archive » Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage
    August 12th, 2009 at 10:50 pm

    [...] Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage A while back we embarked on a study that evolved after a having a debate in the office as to how people are using and consuming Twitter. Some felt it was their source of news and articles, others felt it was just a bunch of self-promotion with very few folks actually paying attention. But mostly, many people still perceive Twitter as just mindless babble of people telling you what they are doing minute-by-minute; as if you care they are eating a sandwich at the moment. … So we took 2,000 tweets from the public timeline (in English and in the US) over a 2-week period from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) and captured tweets in half-hour increments. Then we categorized them into 6 buckets: [...]

20. Ryan Kelly
    August 12th, 2009 at 11:09 pm

    @Mahasti – I’m sure this would vary by region, such as Iran. We only took a sample from the US in this study, as it would be much too exhaustive to a much larger comparison by region. I would also note, however, that by taking a snapshot in time, you risk being skewed by events (such as the Iranian election) that would otherwise change the trends altogether. I wouldn’t mind partnering up with a University to do a more extensive analysis.

    @Martin Lessard – thank you, Martin! Yes, combining the Pass-Along Value with Conversational is a positive correlation. Categorizing the tweet as “Babble” had more to do with if the tweet was relevant to a mass audience, or just a few. I agree that “I’m on my way to the event XYZ” is important to a few of the people you are meeting there, but not necessarily to your other 1,000 followers. Therefore, we would categorize that as “babble”.

21. Reciente estudio indica que el 40% de lo que se dice en twitter es irrelevante =A= Aeromental
    August 12th, 2009 at 11:22 pm

    [...] Más información: Página oficial del estudia del estudio, versión en PDF. Tags: estadística + twitter + Ver [...]

22. mahasti
    August 13th, 2009 at 12:33 am

    Ryan, I get your point about the risk of being skewed by events. Twitter, along with FB and YouTube was key in helping people [self-]organize campaign rallies and stay informed post-election. Collectively, use of new media also qualified the protesters in some ways (young, tech-savvy, 21st c…). It would be interesting to know the phenom better. I’ll see if I can get a univ interested and will let you know–sometime in mid-Sept (I’m guessing I can find your contact info online).

23. William Hunt
    August 13th, 2009 at 12:57 am

    I appreciate your attempt to test the hypothesis that Twitter is used for self-promotion. I agree with you that your results suggest that the hypothesis fails. I also appreciate your analytic approach.

    However, I do not find that you study said much else, and certainly not a conclusion of 41% of tweets are pointless babble. If you want to say something meaningful you need to take categorization more seriously. I don’t find your categories well defined, inclusive, consistently created, non-overlapping, well researched, necessary or sufficient. Your brief descriptions left a lot to be desired and I personally found a lot of tweets I see would be hard to put into one of your categories and suspect others would too, making the study hard to repeat.

    Hey, you have some analytical skills and maybe some of your past or future research is worthwhile but this study disappointed.

24. TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble 
    August 13th, 2009 at 1:32 am

    [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

25. Penn Olson – Research Says Most Tweets are POINTLESS [Video]
    August 13th, 2009 at 1:49 am

    [...] Peeranalytics goes hardcore and did a scientific research on this. The results are pretty interesting. [...]

26. “Pointless Babble” « DA 2.0
    August 13th, 2009 at 2:03 am

    [...] den Kommentaren Die Analysten von Pearanalytics scheinen etwas gegen Small Talk zu haben. In einer Studie über den Inhalt der Tweets auf Twitter vom August 2009 schreiben [...]

27. Twitter Studie - 40% der Tweets sind sinnloses Geplapper | Wuensch-Media
    August 13th, 2009 at 2:04 am

    [...] – 40% der Tweets sind sinnloses Geplapper August 13th, 2009 | by Michael Wuensch | // Eine Twitter Studie, durchgeführt von Pearanalytics, kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass 40% der Tweets nur sinnloses [...]

28. 统计显示：超过40%的Twitter信息是废话 « 每日IT新闻，最新IT资讯，聚合多站点消息，保证你与世界同步
    August 13th, 2009 at 3:40 am

    [...] 他们的调查结果对我们这些热衷于Twitter的人们来说并不怎么乐意听，因为它表明40.55% [...]

29. All Change at the Next Stop: Yahoo, Bing, Google & Facebook – Mackerel Media’s SEO Blog
    August 13th, 2009 at 7:32 am

    [...] to be rising in rank, but with the recent ‘revelation’ that 40% of Tweets are ‘pointless babble‘ is this necessarily a good [...]

30. Brad Hart
    August 13th, 2009 at 8:38 am

    Statistically significant has changed quite a bit, which is exactly why most people get things wrong when talking about the internet. 2000 tweets over two weeks is not significant, no matter what old academic models might state. Statistical significance on Twitter would be 2000 tweets an hour over the the course of 2 weeks and would range from 7am in the east and until midnight on the west coast if you are trying to gauge American/Canadian tweeting.

31. SmithWill
    August 13th, 2009 at 9:35 am

    Very interesting and not surprising. On Twitter as in life, there’s a whole lot of self-promotion and BS out there. It’s a way to connect sociopaths and people bent on self-flagellation and give everyone what they want when they want it.

32. Why Twitter Rocks « Desi In Toronto
    August 13th, 2009 at 9:45 am

    [...] No clue but the point is that companies are paying attention to this technology and just because 40.5% of tweets are about what one did a few minutes ago, does not mean that MSM dismiss the rest of the tweets [...]

33. Public Related» Smalltalk in Twitterville door Steven Van Gaever
    August 13th, 2009 at 10:12 am

    [...] dat 40% van de tweets bestaat uit nutteloos gebabbel. Over een periode van twee weken verzamelde Pear Analytics 2.000 willekeureige tweets en verdeelde ze onder in 6 [...]

34. TWIT TEN HOW MANY TWEETS ARE POINTLESS « The Reluctant Twitterer
    August 13th, 2009 at 10:22 am

    [...] how? A bunch of twitterers counted and counted and [...]

35. Quick Snips: Pointless Babble rules Twitterverse « One Girl Revolution
    August 13th, 2009 at 10:31 am

    [...] A lot of people have been saying it since that bluebird of twitterness started whistling his happy little tune: Twitter is pointless. And now, there is a study to prove it. [...]

36. Tudor
    August 13th, 2009 at 10:36 am

    Thanks for pioneering study. I’ll cite it when appropriate for my students (who were early adapters of twitter). Agree about difficulty of extrapolating from the study sample, but much food for thought.
    My suspicion was more blatent self-marketing going on.

    A reluctant twitterer(sic)I know drew my attention to your study
    http://thereluctanttwitterer.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/twit-ten-how-many-tweets-are-pointless/

    Regards

37. Forty-some percent of Twitter’s tweets are babble « Dating Jesus
    August 13th, 2009 at 11:15 am

    [...] August 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment It says so here. [...]

38. Reg Boyle
    August 13th, 2009 at 11:18 am

    A most interesting result Ryan. Not really surprising though, considering how shallow the question. In Ustrayn, “Whatcha doin’ mate?” “Aw, not much.” But of course that presumes the respondent is adhering to the question, which I would assume, most do not. I say assume, because the thought of Twittering sends shivers of despair down my ancient spine.

    The current disarming tactic on the internet would certainly not lend relevance to a medium such as Twitter. Namely, “Stop making things up.” Note that it is not a request, it is an acceptable diversionary demand intended to distract from an assertion. The modern equivalent of, “and have you stopped beating your wife yet?” The opportunities are endless and the name apt in expressing the futility of the whole process. Kindly set me straight Ryan, if there’s something I have missed.

39. Ryan Kelly
    August 13th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    @Brad Hart – we have to balance what is statistically significant for the 3 million + tweets per day just in the US alone, and that’s probably understated. So if we collected 4,000 or even 10,000 tweets, how much more significant is that really? I can spend 8 months capturing data, and give the same results as our two week study.

    @Reg Boyle – perhaps this is the point of Twitter – we’re OK with that. We’re not saying “pointless babble” is a bad thing – but everyone is saying “what’s the point of Twitter? I can tell my friends what I am doing in Facebook.” Our study shows that the new face of Twitter has not quite emerged yet.

40. Firm reports Twitter is 40% useless babble. We’re 0% surprised. | Anthonyrobinson.info
    August 13th, 2009 at 2:21 pm

    [...] super shocking results: just over 40% of tweets qualify as “pointless babble.” Following in second place are “controversial” updates, at [...]

41. Twitter e plictisitor. Cum ar trebui folosit Twitterul? | Marius Sescu
    August 13th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    [...] recomand sa te abonezi prin RSS feed sau email pentru a primi ultimele posturi. E gratis!Conform unui studiu, 40,55% din mesajele de pe Twitter sunt balbaieli fara sens, inutile. Numai 8,7% dintre tweeturi [...]

42. 40% das mensagens do Twitter são inúteis. Será? [admit.com.br] ADMIT
    August 13th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    [...] a empresa PearAnalytics divulgou um dado um tanto estranho pra [...]

43. Brad Hart
    August 13th, 2009 at 3:34 pm

    Ryan, 2 weeks is a fine amount of time, except your result neglects one of the heaviest user bases, college students working online from campus, there is still a huge part of the population that doesn’t have internet access from home. I am not here to dispute whether your results are right or not, they could be right overall, statistically insignificant models sometimes do get it right after all.

    You do hit the nail on the head though, 2k or even 10k tweets captured over two weeks isn’t enough to make any sort of accurate analysis from, henceforth the reason I said track 2k an hour which would amount to a significant cross section . Secondly, your time frame is completely out of whack if you are trying to find out how real people use twitter 11am to 5pm Central Time captures mostly what people are doing after lunch in the US, but before they get home from work. The biggest problem with this is most people can’t twit from work.

    The next problem with this part of the model, is it is too short of a time trying to track too large of a geographic area. You can at most track and compare two time zones with any sort of reliability over this short of a period. You would be far better off trying to track a single time zone which is easy enough since most people list their location. As a twitter user who has his client up all day long I will also tell you the priority people from different geographic locations is considerably different. How do i know that last part? I keep the people I follow sorted into different columns by timezone on tweetdeck.

    In the end you have a good start, but you are trying to make too big a conclusion with far too little data.

44. Estatísticas para o Twitter em Agosto/2009 | The Antonio Max Times
    August 13th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

    [...] acessar o artigo da Pearanalytics, click aqui. Se quiser baixar diretamente a pesquisa em PDF, click [...]

45. Rob Szarka
    August 13th, 2009 at 7:21 pm

    Since twitter isn’t conducive to nuanced discussion, let me try to explain my “should factor in reach of tweets” comment here…

    Your results would be more interesting to me if, rather than simply counting posts, you (for example) weighted the posts by the number of followers. @aplusk and similar celebrities aside, I have the impression that the kind of users who frequently post “pointless babble” aren’t followed by anyone beyond a small circle of personal friends; at the same time, there are many well-followed posters (e.g. @timoreilly) who almost never post about what they had for lunch. Your study measures what people are posting about, rather than what people are reading about. So, if my impression is accurate, your study overstates the amount of “pointless babble” on twitter.

    Or I could be wrong. Maybe the @aplusk type posters have *more* reach than the @timoreilly posters, and twitter contains even more pointless babble than you suggest!

46. Ryan Kelly
    August 13th, 2009 at 8:10 pm

    @Rob Szarka – point taken. I had dinner with Scoble last night, and he wants me to compare the streamline of the folks he is following to Evan Williams’ stream of incoming tweets. He thinks that the folks Evan follows are more of the celebrity type, versus Scoble himself tries hard to follow only the “geek” crowd, and people he has met (he unfollowed just about everyone last week). So I think this could be an interesting correlation, and then compared to our original study, additional insights.

47. Ryan Kelly
    August 13th, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    @William Hunt – do you have any suggestions? re: “I don’t find your categories well defined, inclusive, consistently created, non-overlapping, well researched, necessary or sufficient.”

    You’re not the first person to say this; however, no one has given me any other way to do it with a reasonable explanation. Therefore, your comment disappoints me.

48. Firm reports Twitter is 40% useless babble. We’re 0% surprised.
    August 14th, 2009 at 4:04 am

    [...] what goes on over at Twitter. The super shocking results: just over 40% of tweets qualify as "pointless babble." Following in second place are "conversational" updates, at 37.5%. Their findings are based on [...]

49. Most Tweets Pointless Babble: So What? | The Blog Herald
    August 14th, 2009 at 4:29 am

    [...] Thord Daniel Hedengren A whitepaper published by Pear Analytics (found via Mashable) says that 40.55% of all tweets are pointless babble. While that probably [...]

50. Firm reports Twitter is 40% useless babble. We’re 0% surprised. | Anthonyrobinson.info
    August 14th, 2009 at 11:11 am

    [...] super shocking results: just over 40% of tweets qualify as “pointless babble.” Following in second place are “conversational” updates, at [...]

51. Speedy B « Firm reports Twitter is 40% useless babble. We’re 0% surprised.
    August 14th, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    [...] super shocking results: just over 40% of tweets qualify as “pointless babble.” Following in second place are “conversational” updates, at [...]

52. Study: Twitter is 40 percent ‘pointless babble’ | Design Website Blog
    August 14th, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    [...] tweets, as they’re called–can be classified as “pointless babble,” according to a new study from Pear Analytics. Coming in second was “conversational,” which the company says makes up 37.55 of all [...]

53. SociaListed » TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble
    August 14th, 2009 at 6:08 pm

    [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

54. Study: Twitter is 40 percent 'pointless babble' | Blogging
    August 14th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

    [...] tweets, as they’re called–can be classified as “pointless babble,” according to a new study from Pear Analytics. Coming in second was “conversational,” which the company says makes up 37.55 of all [...]

55. At Least 40% of What You Say on Twitter Doesn’t Matter. OMGZ!
    August 14th, 2009 at 7:20 pm

    [...] reported on Mashable, a group of party-poopers at the marketing intelligence company meticulously combed through a deluge of tweets over a two week period, sorting each message into such memorable groups as [...]

56. Study: Twitter is 40 percent ‘pointless babble’ - Programming Blog
    August 14th, 2009 at 7:49 pm

    [...] tweets, as they’re called–can be classified as “pointless babble,” according to a new study from Pear Analytics. Coming in second was “conversational,” which the company says makes up 37.55 of all [...]

57. Most Tweets Pointless Babble: So What? | OpenABlog
    August 14th, 2009 at 9:41 pm

    [...] A whitepaper published by Pear Analytics (found via Mashable) says that 40.55% of all tweets are pointless babble. While that probably won’t get any raised eyebrows, it is worth to know how the good folks at PA got this conclusion: [...]

58. Freetracking.org » Study: Twitter is 40 percent ‘pointless babble’
    August 14th, 2009 at 11:09 pm

    [...] tweets, as they’re called–can be classified as “pointless babble,” according to a new study from Pear Analytics. Coming in second was “conversational,” which the company says makes up 37.55 of all [...]

59. Bodhi
    August 15th, 2009 at 12:00 am

    I’m surprised your report let this pass without comment:

    “Teens like Facebook and MySpace because they have the ability to select who they want to connect to, who they want to share emails, screen names and phone numbers with. Twitter is not closed in the 
    same manner.  Anyone can follow your status updates.”

    It’s possible (although not common) to have all your posts on Twitter “protected” so that only selected people can see them. A group of teens could easily have a closed group within the Twitter community.

60. Ryan Kelly
    August 15th, 2009 at 12:12 am

    @Bodhi – you’re right. I was just re-stating what Matthew Robson said. Despite this option (in addition to “blocking”), teens perceive Twitter to be “unsafe” – and Twitter has not been exposed to the same amount of publicity about security and protection as FB has.

61. Stephendann.com
    August 15th, 2009 at 2:53 am

    Pear Analytics Twitter Report: Criticisms of the coding methods…

    Pear Analytics produced a study about the usage of Twitter, and I fear they reveal more about their own organisational ability than then do anything about Twitter.  I’ve read the public white paper, and I’m finding myself doubting the valu…

62. על מה מצייצים באמת בטוויטר? | Newsgeek
    August 15th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    [...] שנערך במשך שבועיים על ידי חברת pearanalytics, כל פעם בזמן נתון בין 11:00-17:00 (בשפה האנגלית ומארצות [...]

63. Twitter Tweets - Needle in a haystack? | Sydney Australia: Shift Interactive Web 2.0 Design
    August 15th, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    [...] new Twitter usage report confirms the long-held rumour that Twitter comprises 40.5% pointless banter, a la [...]

64. Annie Pettit
    August 15th, 2009 at 8:06 pm

    I must say i’m offended that 40% of tweets are deemed pointless babble. What is irrelevant to you is highly relevant to someone else. I AM interested when someone tells me what they ate for breakfast or what movie they’re thinking of going to see. In my books, pointless babble is a tweet with no content.

65. 40% dos tweets são papo inútil, diz pesquisa |
    August 15th, 2009 at 8:25 pm

    [...] estudo da Pear Analytics avaliou 2 mil posts no Twitter em duas semanas e concluiu que 40,45% deles eram pura conversa [...]

66. spotrick
    August 15th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    This study makes sense only to someone who doesn’t actually use Twitter. I get zero spam because I choose who I follow. If someone started spamming me, I would unfollow. (I have.) And, as others have pointed out, “babble” is a value judgment based on knowledge of context. If you follow someone, that suggests you are interested in their day and how it’s going. If not interested, don’t follow. It’s not rocket surgery.

67. Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage | Pear Analytics « Letters from Adelaide
    August 15th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    [...] As you may have guessed, Pointless Babble won with 40.55% of the total tweets captured; however, Conversational was a very close second at 37.55%, and Pass-Along Value was third (albeit a distant third) at 8.7% of the tweets captured. via Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage [...]

68. E-TARD
    August 16th, 2009 at 12:35 am

    Twitter Rocks
    I get soo many hits on my website every day from twitter

    I like pearanalytics it’s cool
    can’t w8 for the blog Analyzer tool to come out
    keep up the good work pearanalytics ppl

69. Study: Twitter is 40 percent ‘pointless babble’ « Himanshu's Blog
    August 16th, 2009 at 5:18 am

    [...] tweets, as they’re called–can be classified as “pointless babble,” according to a new study from Pear Analytics. Coming in second was “conversational,” which the company says makes up 37.55 of all [...]

70. apophenia: Twitter: "pointless babble" or peripheral awareness + social grooming?
    August 16th, 2009 at 11:46 am

    [...] like this one by Pear Analytics drive me batty. They concluded that 40.55% of the tweets they coded are pointless babble; 37.55% [...]

71. Mentors Blog » TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble
    August 16th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

72. hughmcguire.net · Babbling about Twitter & Microblogging
    August 16th, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    [...] boyd points to a study of Twitter usage by PearAnalytics, that concludes: 40.55% of the tweets they coded are pointless babble; 37.55% are conversational; [...]

73. ‘Babble’ Dominates Twitter, Study Says
    August 16th, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    [...] a debate in the office as to how people are using and consuming Twitter,” Kelly wrote in a blog post. “Some felt it was their source of news and articles, others felt it was just a bunch of [...]

74. Hugh McGuire: Babbling about Twitter | Loans in
    August 16th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    [...] McGuire: Babbling about Twitter Sunday, August 16th, 2009 Danah Boyd points to a study of Twitter usage by PearAnalytics, that concludes: 40.55% of the tweets they coded are pointless babble; 37.55% are conversational; [...]

75. Hugh McGuire: Babbling about Twitter | Twimmer.com :: Twitter News
    August 16th, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    [...] August 16th, 2009 Source: http://www.huffingtonpost... No comments Danah Boyd points to a study of Twitter usage by PearAnalytics, that concludes:40.55% of the tweets they coded are pointless babble; 37.55% are conversational; [...]

76. Ted
    August 16th, 2009 at 7:18 pm

    Another lame blog article about somebody’s opinion about how social media should be used.

    ABC Nightline recently did a story with Biz Stone and Evan Williams, the founders of Twitter, in which they discussed how their service is being used:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfnoWk3x2RU

    If it’s babble to you, then like Evan said, you can just “turn it off’”.

77. 40% dos tweets são papo inútil, diz pesquisa « WinExperience
    August 16th, 2009 at 8:15 pm

    [...] Um estudo da Pear Analytics avaliou 2 mil posts no Twitter em duas semanas e concluiu que 40,45% deles eram pura conversa [...]

78. Progressive Advertiser | Research Reveals: Most Twitter Posts is “Pointless Babble”
    August 17th, 2009 at 12:07 am

    [...] Pear Analytics, more than 40% of all tweets is “Pontless Babble”. At the same time, over 37% tweets [...]

79. edbuzz.org » The Weekly Update: August 10- August 16
    August 17th, 2009 at 5:11 am

    [...] Twitter Study Reveals Reveals Interesting Results about Usage– Ryan Kelly, Pearanalytics [...]

80. Anonymous
    August 17th, 2009 at 6:04 am

    [...] [...]

81. What do people Tweet about? Pointless Babble – is there value? — The Infocratic
    August 17th, 2009 at 6:50 am

    [...] study was released by Pear Analytics today evaluating what people really Tweet about.  They took a sample of 2,000 tweets over a 2-week [...]

82. Ylan Kunstler
    August 17th, 2009 at 6:53 am

    Like everyone I would like to thank you for taking the time to launch this study and more importantly for sharing it.

    I was wondering though if you begin a study by categorizing something as “Pointless Babble” whether the category innately connotes something that is of no worth or value. What about the idea that <a href="http://theinfocratic.com/what-do-people-tweet-about-pointless-babble-is-there-value/"One Person's Tweet Trash, Is Possibly Another's Tweet Treasure"…

    You qualified Pointless Babble as “I am eating a sandwich now” tweets.

    What about Social Media marketers? Would I not be potentially interested in Pointless Babble if I worked for Subway or Quiznos or another fast food company (McDonalds, Burger King, Chipotle, etc.) for example? Perhaps I would be interested in Tweeting this person with a promotional offer, or start a conversation with them to gain insights about their eating and fast food purchasing habits.

    As long as people are interested in Tweeting “Pointless Babble”, what we need as marketers to draw value from these opportunities is 1) a more efficient way to target relevant information and 2) a strategy that enables us to act on this information in a meaningful and personal way.

    When you consider that your study qualified another 37.55% of tweets as Conversational, that means that one could filter through 78% of the data in the hopes of finding more information about people’s habits, what they think, and what they may want right now….this is still potentially powerful.

    Perhaps you could include in your study another set of categories:
    a) Mentions an activity i.e. biking, skiing, swimming
    b) Mentions a specific place
    c) Mentions a product or company
    and cross reference with an emotional response rating: Likes/positive attitude, Neutral, or Dislikes/Negative

    Look forward to reading about your future insights.

83. Most Twittering And Tweets Are Junk | They Would Say That
    August 17th, 2009 at 6:59 am

    [...] research and analysis group Pear Analytics has found in their report that more than 40% of tweets were what they descibed as ‘babble’ i.e. pointless [...]

84. eolai
    August 17th, 2009 at 7:10 am

    I’m puzzled by your categories.

    If somebody says “I’m now on my way to event XYZ”, that could have different meanings based on context of previous tweets or blog posts. It could have mass interest because it pertains to something the tweeter said they would do once at XYZ, so it could be self-promotion. Or it could be a way to let people know that no conversations will be possible for a certain period of time – which would make it conversational. Whatever its purpose though, surely it isn’t pointless?

    If somebody says they are having a sandwich for lunch, is it really pointless? What if previous tweets indicate they can’t eat bread without a serious medical problem resulting? What if it’s a response to a request for people of a certain geographic area or grouping to indicate what they’re having for lunch as part of an online survey? What if it means they’re about to break the world record for eating sandwiches for meals? What if 8 people just asked them – would that not make it conversational?

    Even if context isn’t apparent, is it not possible that tweets you categorize as pointless babble could be part of branding, which would make them self-promotional,? And even if they have no product/service or other web presence to promote, could not a tweet you categorize as pointless babble in fact be part of presenting themselves, a promotion of their very being – which would surely have an important social role?

    My point is that “pointless babble” seems at best to be a misnomer; it looks like a category you’ve put things into because you don’t know where to put them but unfortunately you’re now being quoted as saying that a significant amount of what is posted on twitter is pointless. I appreciate you’re not saying that it’s bad, but pointless isn’t very good, is it? Wouldn’t “I Don’t Know” have been a better name for that category?I’ve looked at hundreds of thousands of tweets and seen very few I would call pointless.

85. David
    August 17th, 2009 at 8:49 am

    the predominance of pointless babbling is interesting. Perhaps it shows that users are evolving a common language to use with this new communication tool? (i.e., babbling as a precursor to language)

86. 40% no Twitter ierakstiem ir bezjēdzīga muldēšana | Pods.lv
    August 17th, 2009 at 8:58 am

    [...] Pētījuma veicēju bloga ieraksts par šo pašu tēmu. # 17.08.2009 15:38:48 | 46 lasījumi [...]

87. Twitter and pointless babble « Meeting on the ledge
    August 17th, 2009 at 9:18 am

    [...] and pointless babble There’s a wonderful story on the BBC news website about a survey by Pear Analytics indicating that 40% of messages on Twitter are ‘pointless babble’, 37% of messages are [...]

88. Qumber Hussain's Portfolio
    August 17th, 2009 at 9:37 am

    [...] recent study on Twitter reveals that it’s primarily used for pointless babble. I’m sure most people [...]

89. Twitter is 40 Percent Pointless Babble | Fusion Unlimited Digital Marketing Blog
    August 17th, 2009 at 9:43 am

    [...] study conducted by American market research firm Pear Analytics have found that 40% of messages sent on twitter are ‘pointless babble’ like ‘I’m having a [...]

90. Steve James
    August 17th, 2009 at 9:52 am

    Tempted by the BBC news story to visit your website, I’m afraid your white paper lacks substance and you should have found a more intuitive angle for your study.

    Categorisation leaves much to be desired, and putting 40% of your recording into one criteria of ‘pointless babble’ ultimately means your report is also pointless babble I’m afraid! (Sorry – could not resist that)

    For instance – surely having someone tweet ‘I am eating a sandwich’ is a potential opp for a sandwich company to engage? I fear you do not truly know the value of Twitter itself, which is perhaps, more worrying. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. Starbucks would love to know when Lance Armstrong (of 1.6m followers) is eating a sandwich.

    What would be interesting is if you categorised more deeply than your office-favoured category headings which do more to amuse than to educate.

    I like the demographics compilation though, so the report was worth the read for that alone. Thankyou.

91. Twitter is full of “pointless babble” | Primate Designs
    August 17th, 2009 at 10:02 am

    [...] Check out Pear Analytics’ full report Tags: marketing, twitter [...]

92. Of course Twitter is “pointless babble” « Richard Stacy @ Stacy Consulting
    August 17th, 2009 at 10:41 am

    [...] Published August 17, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment Pear Analytics has recently released a report that claims that 40% of tweets are “pointless babble”.  This study is reviewed here by [...]

93. Twitter Usage, By The Numbers: Most Tweets are “Pointless Babble” - City Desk - Washington City Paper
    August 17th, 2009 at 10:46 am

    [...] study by Pear Analytics – of 2,000 random tweets over a 10-day period this month – broke all [...]

94. Could Twitter deliver destination advice and content? « 23Musings
    August 17th, 2009 at 11:11 am

    [...] recommendations, trends, memes, geeky chatter, friendships and mindless drivel (40% mindless drivel according to Pear Analytics). Reading this post on how best to use Twitter by Chris Brogan made me think that it could have a [...]

95. Greg
    August 17th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    I’ve been a twitter’er for 2 years and have gone through several phases of it’s use. My previous use was focused on providing valuable insight into the latest technology happenings, but I am now in the phase of using it simply as a way to Chronical my life by answering the core question of what I am doing. While this may appear to be babble to you, it is useful to me. I care less about the value it provides others and more about the value it will give me in the future.

    - Greg

96. Sarah Monahan
    August 17th, 2009 at 12:29 pm

    At no point did we say how Twitter should be used. We simply were interest in how it was actually being used. Yes, people can turn off the tweets that don’t interest them. We however followed the public timeline and couldn’t “turn off” the posts that were uninteresting to anybody but themselves.

97. Why Twitter is not 40% “pointless babble” – Are you thinking inside out?
    August 17th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    [...] Analytics just published a whitepaper stating that 40% of tweets are “pointless babble”. This research has been captured by [...]

98. Tell Me Again How Twitter is a Premier Source of Breaking News? | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD
    August 17th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    [...] Twitter struggling with low retention rates? Perhaps, because so many tweets are utter nonsense. Research outfit Pear Analytics randomly sampled 2,000 tweets from the public timeline over a two-week period and categorized them as News, Spam, Self Promotion, [...]

99. Tech Whiz Underground » Tell Me Again How Twitter is a Premier Source of Breaking News?
    August 17th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    [...] Twitter struggling with low retention rates? Perhaps, because so many tweets are utter nonsense. Research outfit Pear Analytics randomly sampled 2,000 tweets from the public timeline over a two-week period and categorized them as News, Spam, Self Promotion, [...]

100. Tweets zu 40 Prozent belanglos « Blog
     August 17th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

     [...] wird diese Behauptung durch die Ergebnisse einer aktuellen Twitter-Studie von Pear Analytics. Das Marktforschungsinstitut stuft insgesamt 40 Prozent der englischsprachigen Tweets als [...]

101. Tell Me Again How Twitter Is a Premier Source of Breaking News? [Digital Daily] | UpOff.com
     August 17th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

     [...] Research outfit Pear Analytics randomly sampled 2,000 tweets from the public timeline over a two-week period and categorized them as News, Spam, Self Promotion, Conversational, Pass-Along Value and Pointless Babble (click on image to enlarge). Unsurprisingly, the largest portion, 40.55 percent, fell under Pointless Babble, which Pear Analytics loosely defines as those “I am eating a sandwich now” tweets. Conversational ranked second with 37.55 percent and Pass-Along Value a distant third with 8.7 percent of the tweets captured. Oddly, Self Promotion and Spam ranked fairly low with 5.85 percent and 3.75 percent of total tweets captured, collectively. Still, both were higher than News which ranked at the very bottom with 3.6 percent. [...]

102. I’d Appreciate It If You’d Stop Calling My Tweets ‘Pointless’- The SiliconANGLE
     August 17th, 2009 at 2:14 pm

     [...] It If You’d Stop Calling My Tweets ‘Pointless’';tweetcount_cnt=0;I keep seeing this study performed by Pear Analytics bandied about the blogosphere as if it were some sort of gospel handed down by the Lords of the [...]

103. Getting Labour’s message across « David Jones, MP
     August 17th, 2009 at 2:29 pm

     [...] is named Labour’s “Twitter Tsar” (or should that be Tsarina?), the US market research firm Pear Analytics reports that 40 per cent of tweets are “pointless [...]

104. Brian
     August 17th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

     I have access to the raw data of over 51 million (and growing) tweets. This accounts for about 1.5% of all tweets generated so far. You have my email, contact me if you are interested in access to the data.

105. Sarah Monahan
     August 17th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

     So does anybody who wants to get onto http://www.twitter.com/public_timeline
     I urge all the people who disagree about our study to read it everyday for 2 weeks. After 2 days, you’ll be bored.

106. anon
     August 17th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

     You actually realize the limitations of Twitter and why people choose to use it?, in whatever capacity they wish Good, that will explain why you decided to announce to the world about the “pointless babble” statistic – you didn’t actually think that pass-along would be top or something? That’s what REAL news sites are for. Twitter fills the gap between conversation and forum posts, to a degree – not to post a sample of that thesis you’ve been working for so long on.

107. Designosaur
     August 17th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

     “Value” is relative (as has already been pointed out).

     Also, how often could one expect to get profound (aka, something other than “mindless babble”) responses to the question “What are you doing?” That seems to be what the initial point of Twitter was: answering that question.

108. Chris Hone
     August 17th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

     Yes, and this research is an example of complete babble as it useless and serves no purpose.

109. BBC: 40% OF TWEETS ARE MINDLESS ‘BABBLE’ - Daily Babel
     August 17th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

     [...] out by US market research firm Pear Analytics, the study aimed to produce a snapshot of what people do with the [...]

110. Pointless Babble? « AmyPalko
     August 17th, 2009 at 4:00 pm

     [...] to recent research carried out by Pear Analytics, 40.5% of all tweets are classifiable as ‘pointless babble,’ which the researchers [...]

111. Sarah Monahan
     August 17th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

     Actually, it did have a purpose. Seeing as how many thousands of people have responded to the survey, it seems it had a much bigger purpose than originally intended. It has made everyone examine themselves and their Tweets. People have either become very defensive and argue that all their Tweets are little pearls of wisdom that everyone needs to know about or people are surprised that it’s only 40% babble.
     It’s not like someone paid us a bunch of money to to this survey. We did it as a simple analysis to see what it was being used for.

112. The Pulse » Blog Archive » How Many Tweets Could A Tweeter Tweet If A Tweeter Could Tweet, Tweet
     August 17th, 2009 at 4:49 pm

     [...] certainly a warning that everyone using Twitter would do well to heed. Research conducted by Pear Analytics bears evidence of that fact when they found that 40% of what gets posted to Twitter is ‘pointless [...]

113. 40 Percent Of Twitter Just Pointless Babble | AccuraCast Search Daily News
     August 17th, 2009 at 5:20 pm

     [...] analytics company, Pear Analytics, recently conducted a study about the type of Tweets being sent out on Twitter. They found that over 40% of tweets were just [...]

114. De cháchara en Twitter : El Blog de Loretahur
     August 17th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

     [...] hoy los resultados de un estudio llevado a cabo por Pear Analytics sobre el uso que se hace de Twitter (los resultados son de Estados Unidos, por lo que quizás no [...]

115. 40 Percent Of Twitter Just Pointless Babble | Tonetek Blog
     August 17th, 2009 at 6:33 pm

     [...] analytics company, Pear Analytics, recently conducted a study about the type of Tweets being sent out on Twitter. They found that over 40% of tweets were just [...]

116. Things We Already Know – Twitter Used For “Pointless Babble” » TechMamba
     August 17th, 2009 at 7:13 pm

     [...] someone with way too much time on their hands (Pear Analytics) has found out that out of a random sample of 2000 Tweets, that 40% of them are classifiable as [...]

117. 40% of Twitter traffic is worthless tripe, study says – netkritter
     August 17th, 2009 at 8:31 pm

     [...] spam, which shows only that they have a much narrower definition of the term spam than I do. Read Pear’s announcement of the study. Share and [...]

118. Warlach
     August 17th, 2009 at 10:05 pm

     Just thought I’d mention Sarah that there are a number of response to your comments on Stephen Dann’s blog that I’m sure people would be interested in hearing your take on.

     Linkeroo:

119. Does it matter?
     August 18th, 2009 at 12:08 am

     I agree with Designosaur. “What are you doing?” was what twitter was all about initially. In came the social media marketing bandwagon and twitter changed to “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world”. So depending on whom you follow, it could be anything – from a revolution in a country, to a person eating a sandwich. Why make a fuss about it?
     So what’s next? Classifying the updates on facebook? Even that could be an analysis.

     @Sarah: “Actually, it did have a purpose. Seeing as how many thousands of people have responded to the survey, it seems it had a much bigger purpose than originally intended.”

     It did have a purpose. Seemingly, it’s a publicity stunt; and it has served its purpose. Kudos.

120. mahasti
     August 18th, 2009 at 12:31 am

     Brian – any chance I could look at your data (51 m & growing tweets)? I’m interested in a specific topic (#iranelection) that trended from sometime in June to the first week of August. If you can share the data, please e-mail me at mahasti@verizon.net . Thx

121. Stilgherrian
     August 18th, 2009 at 12:55 am

     Sarah, you say:

     People have either become very defensive and argue that all their Tweets are little pearls of wisdom that everyone needs to know about or people are surprised that it’s only 40% babble.

     Could you point to where critics have said anything along the lines of “all their Tweets are little pearls of wisdom that everyone needs to know about”? The criticism I’m seeing (and taking part in) is about the methodology of the categorisation.

     Indeed, much of the criticism of the study is not that tweets are something “everyone needs to know about” but the precise opposite: salient to the tweeter’s specific social group. It’s only this study which makes value judgements about the tweets of strangers being “pointless babble”.

122. Ryan Kelly
     August 18th, 2009 at 1:01 am

     This came out yesterday on TechCrunch – Why I Don’t Use Twitter

123. Twitter: 40 percent of pointless post | Robin Ferianto's blog
     August 18th, 2009 at 2:43 am

     [...] tweets, as they’re called–can be classified as “pointless post,” according to a new study from Pear Analytics. Coming in second was “conversational,” which the company says makes up 37.55 of all [...]

124. Tell Me Again How Twitter Is a Premier Source of Breaking News? [Digital Daily] | OOPSCOOP
     August 18th, 2009 at 2:49 am

     [...] Research outfit Pear Analytics randomly sampled 2,000 tweets from the public timeline over a two-week period and categorized them as News, Spam, Self Promotion, Conversational, Pass-Along Value and Pointless Babble (click on image to enlarge). [...]

125. Twitter vooral gebruikt voor ‘zinloos gebabbel’ — XooZ BLOG
     August 18th, 2009 at 4:12 am

     [...] Pear Analytics (zie het artikel in De Standaard en het artikel op hun blog) bestaat iets meer dan 40% van de conversaties op twitter uit “oppervlakkig geklets”. [...]

126. FrihD
     August 18th, 2009 at 4:57 am

     I suspect that 2000 messages (less than 1/4 of Mo) is not enough given the large data base of messages. There might soon be more replies to this post than sampled messages .
     Especially, the sampling method might introduce a very large bias.

127. Buscando calorcito a través de Twitter « MANUEL DAVID MORENO
     August 18th, 2009 at 5:25 am

     [...] le siguen? Y si es así, ¿qué suele publicar? Así se lo han montado los chicos de la consultora Pear Analitics en su último informe sobre lo que suele hacerse dentro de Twitter, o al menos lo que hacen 2.000 [...]

128. Twitter si sta Facebookizzando?
     August 18th, 2009 at 5:43 am

     [...] Twitter si sta banalizzando. Come Facebook. Una societa’ di marketing statunitense, il gruppo Pear Analytics, dice che il 40 per cento dei messaggi pubblicati su Twitter sono chiacchiere futili, tipo [...]

129. Pointless babble dominates Twitter | The Empire Chronicles
     August 18th, 2009 at 5:47 am

     [...] Pointless Babble won with 40.55% of the total tweets captured; however, Conversational was a very close second at 37.55%, and Pass-Along Value was third (albeit a distant third) at 8.7% of the tweets captured, the company say on their web page. [...]

130. När blir intranätet ett socialt nätverk? « e24 Intranätgruppen
     August 18th, 2009 at 6:44 am

     [...] Studien verkar inte nämna verktyget twitter alls. Intressant, eftersom twitteranvändandet både växer explosionsartat och på samma gång dissas som ”mindless babble of people telling you what they are doing minute-by-minute”. [...]

131. The Pear Analytics Twitter “babble” | the earley edition
     August 18th, 2009 at 8:18 am

     [...] anyone read the original blog post, it would have been plainly obvious the Pear Analytics study was just a shill for some Twitter [...]

132. Janet Street-Porter Calls Stephen Fry Twat. Film at 11. | The Blog Herald
     August 18th, 2009 at 8:44 am

     [...] Twitter is 40% Babble whitepaper, fully ignoring the 9% useful links and information stated in the study. JSP totally missed the point and ignored the fact that Twitter, together with other social [...]

133. Cuatro de 10 mensajes de Twitter no le importan a nadie
     August 18th, 2009 at 8:50 am

     [...] red social que más creció enfrenta un gran desafío: ser útil. Pear Analytics asegura que sólo 8,7% de lo escrito ofrece “información de [...]

134. 80 Percent of Twitter Studies ‘Pointless Babble,’ Researchers Find
     August 18th, 2009 at 9:17 am

     [...] which stated that 19 percent of young adults have used Twitter at least once; and, most notably, a recent report from Pear Analytics that concluded 40 percent of the content on Twitter is “pointless [...]

135. Interesting Study Exposes Twitter Usage Trends | benzipkin.com
     August 18th, 2009 at 9:35 am

     [...] Pear Analytics released a new study on Twitter usage trends. They tracked 2,000 tweets over a 2-week period and then categorized them into six usage buckets: news tweets, spam, self-promotion (my favorite), pointless babble, conversational tweets, and pass-along value. Tweets containing “RT” were categorized as “pass along”, and those using “@” were considered conversational. [...]

136. Ian Thomas has been thinking about… » Twittering technobabble
     August 18th, 2009 at 9:36 am

     [...] Pear’s ana­lysis involved the random sampling of Twitter’s public timeline from Monday through to [...]

137. Matt
     August 18th, 2009 at 9:47 am

     A most unscientific and unsatisfactory study that proves nothing due to the subjective methods taken. However, as an observational exercise merely providing a snapshot there is some value, & there were some valuable conclusions that alas went mostly ignored – I hope the various news organisations who publicised, and more so dramatised these findings into the questionable headlines and sensationalist news are made to feel stupid soon. Its only because they feel threatened that they interpreted this in any sort of significant way for the general trends.

     You might as well walk down the street and ask 200 people what they’re thinking. At least the proportion of porn would be higher.

138. The importance of pointless babble « Informatören och grannen i 2.0
     August 18th, 2009 at 9:51 am

     [...] importance of pointless babble A few days ago, and recently, the media got swamped with news of how Twitter mainly consisted of pointless babble. [...]

139. Twitter Research Mashup and Visualization
     August 18th, 2009 at 9:55 am

     [...] Scott Hoffman on August 18, 2009 Earlier this month Pear Analytics, a research company, published a report where they took 2,000 tweets from the public timeline (in [...]

140. But it’s not babble « Harish Vasudevan's Collection
     August 18th, 2009 at 10:00 am

     [...] it’s not babble By HARISH VASUDEVAN In response to a Pear Analytics survey that said that 40% of all tweets was pointless babble, here’s an interesting perspective that [...]

141. Twitter «
     August 18th, 2009 at 10:05 am

     [...] use as a vital form of citizens’ journalism. Below, a few recent articles about Twitter. From Pear Analytics: a study on how people [...]

142. Pladder på twitter? « Mötesplatsen Fred/bloggen
     August 18th, 2009 at 10:37 am

     [...] är meningslöst babbel. Det skriver Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå och hänvisar till  Institutet Pear Analytics i Texas som har granskat meddelanden på Twitter. Institutet har läst ett par tusen slumpmässigt [...]

143. Twitter: l’impatto sul ciclo delle notizie e su quello dei media
     August 18th, 2009 at 11:06 am

     [...] Il real-time ha cambiato e sta cambiando il Web. Dapprima con l’emergere di Twitter e dei motori di ricerca in tempo reale legati al servizio di microblogging, poi con la ricerca in tempo reale implementata da FriendFeed, di seguito con l’inclusione dei tweets in motori di ricerca come ad esempio Bing, ancora con i Delicious Fresh Bookmarks, e da ultimo con il protocollo PubSubHubbub, una tecnologia per creare RSS feeds real-time, con la ricerca in tempo reale appena lanciata da Facebook (la quale ha pure acquisito FriendFeed), nonché con Caffeine, l’infrastruttura di prossima generazione del motore Google da pochissimo svelata dall’azienda di Mountain View. Insomma, Twitter ha di fatto aperto la strada per una significativa trasformazione del Web, e questo nonostante Sysomos riporti che il 24% dei tweets è in effetti generata da robots in maniera automatica e Pear Analytics classifichi come "pointless babble" circa il 41% degli stessi. [...]

144. Quelques données sur Twitter |
     August 18th, 2009 at 11:25 am

     [...] il me vient l’envie de parler de Twitter. Sachez qu’une récente étude réalisée par Pear Analytics sur une sélection aléatoire de plus de 2.000 tweets a permis de révéler un certain nombre de [...]

145. Siu Sir » Blog Archive » Tweet = Pointless Babble ?
     August 18th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

     [...] Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage Twitter Study – August 2009 Pear Analytics [...]

146. Twitter’s Impact on Marketing | Local Search Topics | TMP Directional Marketing
     August 18th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

     [...] Before those Read Pear’s findings here. [...]

147. Does it matter?
     August 18th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

     Its all making sense, although in bits and pieces – seems like an elaborate smear campaign; PA rising at the cost of poor twitter. I just can’t stop being amused at the way this has been executed.
     Twitter is just a micro-blogging portal. Period. Its a tool, and how you use it and what you use it for is upto you. Why this moral policing? Why this sensationalism?
     Guns have caused more damage than the “babble” on twitter. And our nation is yet to arrive on a consensus on gun laws. There are bigger issues out there that the news channels should rather take care of.
     So what’s the next product PA is launching? A new, fresh, micro-blogging portal aimed at social marketers, with customizable babble and conversation filters attached! Don’t tell me I am right!
     The good folks at PA have made villains out of something as innocuous as Twitter. After bloating up the social media bubble and reaping profit on it for a while, they have had the courage to actually play a part in bursting the bubble and making more profit. And, they have had the support of all the news channels who always crave for something sensational. Its plain profit all the way. Amazing!
     Worse they are walking out clean by stating that this substandard piece of work is actually “research”. Hell, students in high school do better work than the “white paper” you folks have come out with.
     I have nothing for or against twitter. It’s just another social networking portal. But what these folks are doing is intolerable and infuriating.

148. Ryan Kelly
     August 18th, 2009 at 3:41 pm

     There is no moral policing going on here…..that’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? Any by the looks of the analytics data on our site, the number one outbound link is Philtro.com, and their signups are skyrocketing – seems to me people are in need of some kind of filter for all of the noise. The data speaks for itself….

149. Pointless Babble Is King: Twitter Study Almost Hits the Mark - Marketing Autopsy Blog
     August 18th, 2009 at 4:59 pm

     [...] the original Pear Analytics post on “Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage.” Share this [...]

150. Luis Felipe Suarez » Blog Archive » Más del 40% de los mensajes en Twitter son irrelevantes
     August 18th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

     [...] entero mediante ElPaís.com que Pear Analytics ha realizado un estudio llamado Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage, en el cual se pone en manifiesto la calidad de los mensajes que se transmiten en la famosa red de [...]

151. Stilgherrian
     August 18th, 2009 at 5:11 pm

     Ryan, you say:

     “The number one outbound link is Philtro.com, and their signups are skyrocketing — seems to me people are in need of some kind of filter for all of the noise. The data speaks for itself.”

     There’s two problems with that statement, which make me doubt the integrity of this whole operation even further, not just your research.

     1. Your “seems to me” comment about people needs is pure speculation. Another explanation, unfortunately one which doesn’t fit the promotional needs of your client quite as well, is that after all this fuss people are simply curious to see what Philtro actually does. After all, you got news headlines — mission accomplished, well done — so anyone interested in this field professionally will check it out, even sign up — and then perhaps never visit again. It’s way to early to see if there’s real interest in Philtro’s tool.

     2. “Skyrocketing” is not a number. You’re starting from a base of zero, and you provided a dodgy criticism of one of the most popular now tools on the planet. Of course you’re going to see a spike in traffic. What really counts is the lasting value — and it’s too early to see what that will be.

     While I didn’t use the phrase “moral policing” myself, I don’t think it’s that far a stretch. Check Sarah’s comment over here:

     “If some guy tweeted that he was “at the club with his niggaazz and ho’s”, I put it into babble. If there was a post about going in to record at the studio, self promotion. Headed to Karaoke? Babble.”

     That, to me, is a pretty clear value judgement of someone’s communication, and therefore of them personally, based on what? Whether they’re working of socialising? Whether they use “proper grammar” or street slang? Seriously, if you’re not “getting” that this is way off mark then… well… that speaks for itself.

     And you’re still not getting that this “noise” of which you speak is other people’s personal communication. Valuable to them. Your folks make such personal value judgements of other people’s words based on… on whatever you made up at the time… and then wonder why the response is angry? Man, that shows a complete misunderstanding of so much.

152. Twitter babble » Scott Bridges
     August 18th, 2009 at 6:40 pm

     [...] UPDATE: Stilgherrian at Crikey smells and catches a rat: The kicker is at the bottom of Pear’s blog post… [...]

153. Introduction « Babble With a Point
     August 18th, 2009 at 7:36 pm

     [...] other words…I was missing the point. This study woke me up to [...]

154. Introduction Take #1 « Babble With a Point
     August 18th, 2009 at 8:45 pm

     [...] Introduction Take #1 By pointlessbabble You probably already know about this. [...]

155. Meningslöst babbel | min luktar oxo fisk!
     August 18th, 2009 at 9:19 pm

     [...] rubriken som “<i>Meningsfullt babbel på Twitter</i>” med tanke på den undersökning som gjorts, etc, bla, osv…) twitter, bloggar, meningslöshet, [...]

156. Pointless Babble Is In The Eye Of The Beholder | dv8-designs
     August 18th, 2009 at 9:43 pm

     [...] A bunch of folks have been submitting some silly study claiming that 40% of Twitter messages are “pointless babble,” confirming the standard critique from non-Twitter users of the uselessness of Twitter as a whole. [...]

157. Does it matter?
     August 18th, 2009 at 10:08 pm

     The data is speaking whatever you folks have made it to.The news channels bought it because they wanted to. However, it would be foolhardy to expect everyone to buy the results on its face value.

     So, did philtro pay you guys or did you do a dry run just to gain market value?
     May be you are brothers-in-arms after all…….

158. Ryan Kelly
     August 18th, 2009 at 10:32 pm

     @stilgherrian I appreciate your criticisms – I really do. Is this study perfect? No. Was it insightful? We’ll let our readers decide. Remember that this was part 1 of a much longer, ongoing study. Unfortunately, people are missing this point. We simply took the first stab at trying to quantify usage and behavior. We didn’t have a million dollars, and eight months to do this. Frankly, I’m not too sure a study like that would yield much different results anyway.

     Part 2 of the study is to actually track real users and let them decide what THEY think is “pointless babble”. This is likely going to be a much less strict criteria, since it could actually include things that could be deemed conversational, or a RT. Our beta test resides on pointlessbabble.pearanalytics.com. We will be comparing the two data sets, and my guess is that the number will be higher that our original quoted 40.55%. Or, maybe I’m wrong, and it will be less. Let’s see.

     Finally, (last commenter) Philtro is not paying us for anything. Their tool is free, our tool is free – as entrepreneurs, we’re trying to help each other out – that’s it.

159. Conversation in Social Media: How Important Is It? « Emerging Technologies Librarian
     August 19th, 2009 at 12:16 am

     [...] lot of people were talking about a recent study from Pear Analytics analyzing the value of Twitter. I found dozens of comments about it, from which I selected these as representative of the main [...]

160. Janet Street-Porter Calls Stephen Fry Twat. Film at 11. | BLOGCHINA
     August 19th, 2009 at 12:56 am

     [...] Twitter is 40% Babble whitepaper, fully ignoring the 9% useful links and information stated in the study. JSP totally missed the point and ignored the fact that Twitter, together with other social [...]

161. 140Char » Anecdotal insight into Twitter usage and Pear report backlash
     August 19th, 2009 at 2:52 am

     [...] are always interesting, but I’ve also been following the spread of Twitter surveys like the Pear Analytics ‘pointless babble’ whitepaper. By categorising 2000 tweets in English and in the US and putting them into buckets for News, Spam, [...]

162. Study finds 40% of Twitter posts are ‘pointless babble’ | IXPLORA - Mobile Phone News and General Tech News and Discussion
     August 19th, 2009 at 7:19 am

     [...] Pear Analytics looked at a total of 2,000 messages sent between 11:00am and 5:00pm over two weeks.They suspected that most tweets would be self promotion or spam as increasing numbers of companies are turning to Twitter in an attempt to drive up sales. [...]

163. xeit » Blog Archive » Studie: Wenig Spam auf Twitter?
     August 19th, 2009 at 8:04 am

     [...] 3,75 Prozent der Twitter-Nachrichten sind Spam. Das hat Pear Analytics entdeckt. Weitere interessante Ergebnisser der Analyse von 2′000 englischsprachigen Tweets: 37,6 [...]

164. 40% de "blabla inutile" sur Twitter ? | Catpointzero
     August 19th, 2009 at 8:55 am

     [...] étude de Pear Analytics, publiée il y a quelques jours, révèle que 40% des tweets seraient du « blabla [...]

165. Is Twitter Really Just A Bunch of Babble? « The Communications Strategist
     August 19th, 2009 at 9:07 am

     [...] new study claims that 40 percent of all content on Twitter is “pointless [...]

166. Silviya Doneva
     August 19th, 2009 at 9:08 am

     The results sound plausible but I think they are missing something extremely important – how businesses are using Twitter and how they benefit from it. More and more big names like Bank of America, Comcast etc are integrating Twitter in their CRM (customer relations management) reducing their costs from inbound calls, improving customer satisfaction and makeing the relation with consumer more personal and stronger! The real value of Twitter is for businesses…

167. Putting the ’social’ into social media « The Elf Workshop
     August 19th, 2009 at 9:31 am

     [...] to the BBC, the study found that only 8.7% of messages could be said to have “value” as they passed along [...]

168. You Get The . Info » Pointless Babble Is In The Eye Of The Beholder – 1223th Edition
     August 19th, 2009 at 10:40 am

     [...] Leave a comment A bunch of folks have been submitting some silly study claiming that 40% of Twitter messages are “pointless babble,” confirming the standard critique from non-Twitter users of the uselessness of Twitter as a whole. [...]

169. DorobekInsider: Clearing the desk – and stories mentioned on the Daily Debrief « DorobekInsider.com
     August 19th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

     [...] CNet’s previous coverage of the Twitter “babble” report… and read Pear Analytics post on their Twitter report… or download the PDF of the report [...]

170. Ryan Kelly
     August 19th, 2009 at 5:10 pm

     @Silviya – we originally had the impression that Twitter was being “overused” by business promoting products and services. There are certainly many examples of where businesses are using Twitter successfully, such as Whole Foods, Dell and others. I’ve heard stories of being able to get better customer service through Twitter than through the phone. Go figure. However, our study didn’t measure that specifically, but would be good for a future study. Thanks for the comment!

171. Twitter is Pointless – Millions get Pissed « Ciao, Enrico!
     August 19th, 2009 at 6:23 pm

     [...] it, “Twitter is still loaded with lots of babbling that not many of have time for,” (your syntax error, BTW – second to last sentence,) then I fear you just don’t understand what the social [...]

172. How Are People Really Using Twitter?is « Social Media Musings by Tom Humbarger
     August 19th, 2009 at 6:55 pm

     [...] Using Twitter?is Posted on August 19, 2009 by Tom Humbarger Pear Analytics released their study of Twitter usage this month and it had some interesting surprises.  To conduct the study, they randomly sampled [...]

173. Maya Stevens
     August 20th, 2009 at 5:51 am

     Many of Twitter messages are automated and useless for me. I have many followers there, but rarely I can read something nice and interesting. Promotions, links, automated messages, RSS feeds…
     That is the reason to search less popular service similar to Twitter, but with quality content. For example I am testing the new start-up service, that is already popular Gloggy (http://gloggy.com) and I am satisfied for now.

174. When pointless babble isn’t - Behind Glass Walls
     August 20th, 2009 at 6:19 am

     [...] only very little useful information on the Internet. Or the classic: much of Twitter is ‘pointless babble‘. You know what? They’re probably right. So does that mean we need to do something [...]

175. Pointed Babble « Dale Innis’s Weblog
     August 20th, 2009 at 11:26 am

     [...] some soi-disant analytics company published a glitzy paper full of cartoon diagrams, the major headline of which is that 40% of Twitter [...]

176. Fisheye Interns
     August 20th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

     [...] visualization of three studies (conducted by Sysomos and Pear Analytics about Twitter) that the Information is Beautiful blog released in an appealing way that really [...]

177. 140 caracteres de pura bobagem. Você concorda? | #TwitterBH
     August 20th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

     [...] a Pear Analytics fez um estudo para saber o que era dito pela twittosfera. Mais interessante que os números foi o burburinho que [...]

178. Kaira Rouda
     August 20th, 2009 at 2:08 pm

     [...] new study by Pear Analytics said 40.5% of tweets are “pointless babble”. Hrumph. Yes, some of it is: “I [...]

179. Conversation v Babble: How are you tweeting?
     August 20th, 2009 at 3:26 pm

     [...] Aug 12, Pear Analytics released a white paper discussing exactly what people are tweeting about.  For two weeks they randomly [...]

180. Twitter, il 40% dei messaggi sono solo chiacchiere inutili
     August 20th, 2009 at 6:03 pm

     [...] uno studio condotto dalla società di ricerche Pear Analytics il 40% dei messaggi inviati su twitter [...]

181. Crowdsourcing Your IT Support Needs on Twitter – The NSI Partners Blog
     August 20th, 2009 at 10:18 pm

     [...] (maybe just fatigue?) I found this series of tweets today to be amusing.  At the same time that a new study shows that much on twitter is “pointless babble,” along comes one of those exhanges [...]

182. Deconstruyendo a Twitter | Comentarios - Blog
     August 20th, 2009 at 11:25 pm

     [...] empresa Pear Analytics realizó un estudio en base a tweets aleatorios tomados cada 30 minutos, clasificándolos dentro de seis categorías. [...]

183. Twitter gazouillerait-il pour ne rien dire ? - Marketing Digital
     August 21st, 2009 at 2:04 am

     [...] du moins ce que révèle une étude de l’institut Pear Analytics aux USA. Selon l’étude, la moitié (50%) des Twits ne servent à rien et concernent des [...]

184. Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage – More Recent Random Thoughts and Ideas
     August 21st, 2009 at 3:07 am

     [...] so the folks at Pear Analytics did an analysis of 2,000 tweets from the public timeline (in English and in the US) over a 2-week period from 11:00a to 5:00p (CST) [...]

185. Pointless Babble & Conversations | Jonathan MacDonald
     August 21st, 2009 at 3:57 am

     [...] and self-promotions. But critics of the 140-character medium have some support from an August 2009 Pear Analytics study of the site’s public timeline. Download the PDF [...]

186. Si es que no decimos más que tonterías
     August 21st, 2009 at 4:36 am

     [...] luego lo que hace el aburrimiento. Según un estudio publicado recientemente por Pear Analytics la mayor parte de los que publicamos en Twitter es conversación vacía, cháchara sin valor. Basta [...]

187. Twitter: 40% babble, but what about the users? | iGeneration | ZDNet.com
     August 21st, 2009 at 7:19 am

     [...] carried out by Pear Analytics determined that 40% of all messages (”tweets”) on Twitter are pointless babble. It doesn’t say anything about the users though, but does give a rough indication of their [...]

188. Pointless Babble « Alex Hodby
     August 21st, 2009 at 7:38 am

     [...] as well as useful – the recent debate about twitter indicates this (see Pear Analytics’ study of ‘pointless babble’ and replies like Stephen Fry’s) – and if this has an [...]

189. O Mito de que 40% dos Tweets São Sobre Nada « Dissonância Cognitiva
     August 21st, 2009 at 10:35 am

     [...] precipitadas e sensacionalistas. O post no blog da Pear Analytics sobre o estudo tem o título “Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage” já [...]

190. Firm reports Twitter is 40% useless babble. We’re 0% surprised. at Geeker
     August 21st, 2009 at 11:01 am

     [...] super shocking results: just over 40% of tweets qualify as “pointless babble.” Following in second place are “conversational” updates, at [...]

191. Toward Humanity » Blog Archive » The Spamming of Twitter
     August 21st, 2009 at 11:53 am

     [...] of tweets. Pear Analytics, a products and services firm based in San Antonio Texas, conducted a study of tweets. Over a two week period last month, they sampled the Twitter stream every 30 minutes from 11 AM to [...]

192. 40% dos Tweets são papo inútial, diz pesquisa « Windows System
     August 21st, 2009 at 1:58 pm

     [...] papo inútial, diz pesquisa 21/08/2009 at 2:59:pm | In 1 | Leave a Comment Um estudo da Pear Analytis avaliou 2 mil posts no Twitter em duas semanas e concluiu que 40,45% deles eram pura conversa [...]

193. LaughlinOutLoud» Blog Archive » Tweet, tweet. Babble, babble. Fundamental change.
     August 21st, 2009 at 2:31 pm

     [...] A post to gizmodo.com illustrates that only 5% of Twitterers have more than 100 followers. Quantcast.com reports that only 1% of Twitter users account for 35% of its visits. And an oft-cited study out this month from Pear Analytics, cites proprietary research that over 40% of tweets are “pointless babble.” [...]

194. Shopping Mall » Blog Archive » TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble
     August 21st, 2009 at 8:21 pm

     [...] Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. [...]

195. 40% Twitter Babble vs Pogue’s Twitter wits « Everything Public Relations
     August 22nd, 2009 at 9:51 am

     [...] Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage [...]

196. Is time up for Twitter?
     August 23rd, 2009 at 11:28 am

     [...] new study by US market research company Pear Analytics found that some 40% of tweets were, in their own [...]

197. Byte Size Updates
     August 23rd, 2009 at 10:16 pm

     A Look at Twitter’s Growth and Content Value…

     Twitter has been one of the biggest internet crazes of the past year. Twitter was created in 2006, but its biggest growth spurt started near the end of 2008. Although their growth is strong, the number of new visitors that Twitter retains is fairly l…

198. Tracy Mueller » Blog Archive » 7 Things I Learned on Twitter in 7 Days
     August 23rd, 2009 at 11:55 pm

     [...] I also get a lot of eye rolls and blank stares when the microblogging buzzword comes up. And a new study claims that 40% of tweets are “pointless [...]

199. 40% meningslösa meddelanden på Twitter « IT & Lärande
     August 24th, 2009 at 3:06 am

     [...] på Twitter Publicerade augusti 24, 2009 Bloggar , Twitter Leave a Comment Pear Analytics har under två veckor analyserat 2000 amerikanska twittrar och funnit att 40% är meningslöst [...]

200. Seo London
     August 24th, 2009 at 8:15 am

     Pointless Babble won with 40.55% , Conversational was a very close second at 37.55% and Pass-Along Value was third at 8.7% of the tweets captured.Really good results to see that 4 out of 10 are waste its true only the Good and authentic one are conversation remaining are just time pass or spam.Good work Kudos….

201. How To Get Attention By Stating The Obvious « The Communications Strategist
     August 24th, 2009 at 8:25 am

     [...] public relations tactics, Strategic Communications, Twitter | Last week I wrote a post about a study which came to the astonishing conclusion that 40% of the content on Twitter is “pointless [...]

202. The Secret to Social Media Communication Success | designdamage.com
     August 24th, 2009 at 10:27 am

     [...] with a statement on how 40% of Twitter messages are “pointless babble.” As you can see from the comments followed, the statement rubbed some people the [...]

203. Twitter e plictisitor. Cum ar trebui folosit Twitterul? | BV Business Center
     August 24th, 2009 at 7:43 pm

     [...] Cristian Dragos on Aug.24, 2009, under Web|Online Info Conform unui studiu, 40,55% din mesajele de pe Twitter sunt balbaieli fara sens, inutile. Numai 8,7% dintre tweeturi [...]

204. Don’t Play the Blame Game « Ellie Freeman
     August 24th, 2009 at 11:21 pm

     [...] world with those youths (*cough*Gen Y*cough*) who grew up using the Internet and are self-obsessed, “pointless babblers” who use [...]

205. 晓闻心雨 » 统计显示：超过40%的Twitter信息是废话
     August 25th, 2009 at 4:29 am

     [...] 他们的调查结果对我们这些热衷于Twitter的人们来说并不怎么乐意听，因为它表明40.55% [...]

206. Infuse » Blog Archive » Twitter in “Pointless Babble” shock
     August 25th, 2009 at 6:26 am

     [...] BBC reports that 40%  of Twitter content is “pointless babble.” Citing research by Pear Analytics, “40.5% (of Tweets) could be classified as pointless babble, 37.5% as conversational and 8.7% [...]

207. Why Dismissing Twitter as “Babble” is Foolish. | GAby Menta
     August 25th, 2009 at 8:11 am

     [...] Dismissing Twitter as “Babble” is Foolish. 25 Aug 2009 Earlier this week, Pear Analytics released a white paper that classified 40.5 percent of Tweets worldwide as “pointless babble” and only 8.7 [...]

208. Trashy Viral: Spreading Ideas That Don’t Matter | Cheeky Fresh
     August 25th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

     [...] on a Segway”) or just plain media-catchy with little underlying value (”Twitter is 40% useless [...]

209. So What's Wrong With Pointless Babble? | Team Taskmaster | BNET
     August 26th, 2009 at 5:33 pm

     [...] folks at Pear Analytics have determined that a whopping 41 percent of postings on Twitter are “pointless babble” (their words). And to this I [...]

210. Twitter, trees and culture « it’s in my head
     August 27th, 2009 at 8:09 am

     [...] 27 by Troed Sångberg A pretty informal study made the global headlines a week back about how 40% of everything posted to Twitter amounts to just [...]

211. homewage.net
     August 27th, 2009 at 8:42 am

     [...] Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results – 40% is "Pointless … [...]

212. simplekaywa - Twitterkultur?
     August 27th, 2009 at 9:33 am

     [...] Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage . 196 Antworten gibt es bis heute 27.8.2009 auf dieses Posting. Die ganze Studie: Twitter Study [...]

213. RT #Twitter Contains 40% “Pointless Babble” http://bit.ly/1V1UN « Collective Thinking
     August 27th, 2009 at 11:52 am

     [...] 27, 2009 by dennisr61684 A recent Pear Analytics study finds that 40% of Twitter messages from a random sample of 2,000 tweets amount to [...]

214. Democratie in de praktijk » Wat Twitteraars hebben gemeld vanaf Sunset Grooves in Hoek van Holland
     August 27th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

     [...] procent van alle Twitter-berichten valt in de categorie ‘zinloos gebrabbel’, berekende marktonderzoeksbureau Pear Analytics deze maand. Als heavy user scoort Michel aanmerkelijk hoger, [...]

215. Il 40% dei tweets sono chiacchiere inutili « Alphakappa
     August 28th, 2009 at 5:23 am

     [...] possa esistere; che non è “threaded” e pertanto è caotico; che per il 40% è pieno di “pointless babble” (del tipo “mangio un filone prosciutto, tonno e giardiniera e bevo un peroncino”) e per [...]

216. ilMirons
     August 28th, 2009 at 7:30 am

     I’d like to make a note about the method: in my opinion looking for the answer to the question “How do people use Twitter?” should not be focused on tweets in general, but should also consider Twitterers “weight”. Searches showed that 75% of tweets is posted by 5% of users (Gizmodo, you too reported it). I would put a threshold on how much people tweet (or how much are followed, or both) in order to evaluate what “real users” do with Twitter, and philter occasional users because as far as they are many they could be the most of the sample. Philtering on how much people are followed perhaps make even more sense: people reads followed people not the timeline. Then it depends on what you’re looking for with the survey.

     P.S. another thing I was disappointed was the philtering of tech news, but I noticed this will change in next surveys

217. 40% Pointless Babble? – Alles Quatsch! | Webevangelisten
     August 28th, 2009 at 4:08 pm

     [...] texanische Marktforschungsunternehmen Pearanalytics veröffentlichte Anfang August eine Studie, wonach “40% aller Tweet sinnloses [...]

218. Babble + Context = Conversation | I Hate Mornings
     August 29th, 2009 at 10:23 am

     [...] was an awful fuss last week about a company that analyzed Twitter and decided that 40% of it was ‘babble’. As it turns out, their client Philtro is a piece of software that filters Twitter, and their [...]

219. Sunday Morning Twits «
     August 30th, 2009 at 7:35 am

     [...] post on Pear Analytics by Ryan Kelly, Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage – 40% is “Pointless Babble” analyzes 2,000 Tweets on the public timeline over a two week period in a white paper study. The [...]

220. Twitter y los derechos de autor.
     August 31st, 2009 at 1:29 pm

     [...] características del servicio de Twitter (brevedad, tipo de contenido, lenguaje utilizado) –un reciente estudio concluía que el 40% de lo “publicado” en twitter es irrelevante– no parecen, en [...]

221. Nomiki Konst
     August 31st, 2009 at 7:04 pm

     I’d like to declare fridays as Pointless Post Day, it’s the Casual Friday for Social Media!

     See my declaration below:
     http://www.theyippie.com/TheYippie.com_/The_Yippie/Entries/2009/8/31_Yipsdom_of_the_Day.html

222. WordCast 67: Just Like Butter | Kym Huynh
     September 1st, 2009 at 7:59 am

     [...] 40% of Twitter is Pointless Babble. We say, “So”? [...]

223. WordCast 67: Just Like Butter | WordCast - The #1 WordPress Podcast, with WordPress News, WordPress Tips, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, Blogging News, Blogging Tips, and more! | Bitwire Media
     September 1st, 2009 at 11:53 am

     [...] 40% of Twitter is pointless babble. We say… “so”? [...]

224. IBM Seek Patent for "Autoblogging" TV Remote
     September 1st, 2009 at 4:51 pm

     [...] this purpose), so I’m a little biased. However, given that we were recently told that over 40% of what happens on Twitter is junk, I would like IBM to tell me how a device to automate the posting of the most banal information out [...]

225. pointless babble « stuff and things
     September 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 am

     [...] came across an interesting article on MSNBC by Helen A. S. Popkin.  It’s about Twitter and a recent poll that suggests a good portion of ‘tweets‘ are pointless babble.  She comes to the [...]

226. Twitter Bubble Trouble? :: Logical Juice
     September 2nd, 2009 at 3:39 pm

     [...] Now that Twitter has passed its “gee wiz” moment, pages of pixels are being devoted to contrarian points of view – studies that show, for example, that the Twitter channel is choked with “40% pointless babble.” [...]

227. My Twitter Rules: I won’t tweet about lunch. | Marketing and Public Relations Blog
     September 3rd, 2009 at 2:31 pm

     [...] Less is so much more. I don’t tweet a lot and when I do I’m trying to contribute. Hopefully I will NOT: ask stupid questions, tweet the obvious, or otherwise add to the high percentage of blather. [...]

228. Favorite Tweets of August | Pastor Daniel’s Blog
     September 5th, 2009 at 11:29 am

     [...] Pear Analytics study recently claimed that 40% of Tweets are “pointless babble.” Apparently this [...]

229. Ken Jones
     September 5th, 2009 at 11:30 am

     No research is perfect. The purpose of research is to describe, explain or predict phenomenon… to add to the body of knowledge. “Stirring the Pot” if you will, is a way to accomplish this. Ryan’s study certainly accomplishes this. If you are a critic and and see flaws in Ryan’s methodology – do you own study. If you are a reader of the research – understand the limitations and take it for what it is worth.

     Seems like the semantics of Ryan’s category name “Pointless Babble” is the main sticking point of the study. Might I suggest a renaming of the category for the upcoming follow on study. Trivial updates, personal rhetoric, or verbiage might be less offensive.

230. eolai
     September 5th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

     Ken, do we really have to do our own study – can we not criticise what we think is a flaw, not least because it’s the very heading of the post?

     Changing the category name to not describe certain tweets as pointless or as babble, but to call them trivial, verbiage, or personal, doesn’t address the technique of how they categorized – which was by personal judgment ignoring context. I read tweets every day that by theis report’s methodology would be classified as pointless (or by your suggestion as trivial or verbiage) when I know that they are not.

     Random tweets from the general timeline looked at in isolation are very difficult to classify, but dumping them ones you can’t be sure of into what’s really an unknown category and then posting a heading saying 40% of them are pointless is both lazy and inaccurate.

231. Don’t Knock It Until You Try It : Step Ahead | PR, Social Media & Internet Marketing
     September 8th, 2009 at 8:33 am

     [...] Even though pointless babble was 40.55%, conversational tweets accounted for 37.55%. Coming in third was pass-along value at a lower 8.7%. You can read more about the study and get the firm’s white paper on its blog. [...]

232. 40% van Twitter zinloos gewauwel… « Hans | Truin
     September 8th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

     [...] hier:  Het rapport [...]

233. D.K. Smith
     September 26th, 2009 at 12:09 pm

     I’m so glad someone is taking a good look at what’s behind all the Twitter hype, blue smoke, and mirrors.

     Especially since Twitter is hiding their usage data from the world.

     Hope some of their multi-million dollar investors pay attention to your study’s findings.

     Please keep up the good work!

234. Techrisk » Twitter, när narcissism är positivt
     October 5th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

     [...] Pearanalytics research shows that 40% of twitter is pointless babble, read their whitepaper [...]

235. Twitter’s lousy memory « Customers Are Talking
     October 6th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

     [...] It makes sense that it would vanish like a puff of smoke. After all, aren’t tweets largely pointless babble [...]

236. Pequeña infografía con datos sobre Twitter | Materia Geek
     October 21st, 2009 at 9:46 pm

     [...] un tiempo Pear Analytics publicó un estudio sobre Twitter donde indicaba que aproximadamente el 40% de los tweets enviados no tenían [...]

237. Roberto
     October 22nd, 2009 at 8:40 pm

     It reminds me Babylon… lets call it Babblelon

238. :::Philebrity…media, culture, music and more::: » Blog Archive » National Beat: Study Reveals That Twitter Primarily Functions To Perpetuate “Pointless Babble”
     October 29th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

     [...] Perpetuate “Pointless Babble”A study released by San Antonio-based market research firm Pear Analytics revealed what we’ve known all along: most people don’t use Twitter for news. They [...]

239. Got Klout?
     November 20th, 2009 at 11:02 am

     [...] on to the service, what is a healthy, valuable point of engagement?   The study conducted by Pear Analytics suggests that over 40 percent of Tweets came under the “Pointless Babble” category.  That may [...]

240. What happens in Vegas stays on Twitter, dar la noi unde se ciripeşte? | Şcoala de Blog
     December 12th, 2009 at 4:20 am

     [...] reţea socială, oricine s-ar aştepta să găsească mult spam. Un studiu din 2009 realizat de Pear Analytics, care a analizat 2000 de tweeturi, a concis că un procentaj foarte mare este ocupat de [...]

241. How to Twitter |
     December 17th, 2009 at 6:49 pm

     [...] Twitter lists was introduced. Regardless, a good basic understanding of how you should tweet. Why people tweet came from a Pear Analytics report released in [...]

242. ¿Es provechoso usar Twitter en entornos corporativos? « e-rgonomy.com Official Blog
     December 23rd, 2009 at 9:42 am

     [...] http://www.pearanalytics.com/blog/2009/twitter-study-reveals-interesting-results-40-percent-pointles... [...]

243. A look back at 2009: The year of Twitter | Bitcurrent
     January 7th, 2010 at 2:49 pm

     [...] study dismissed 40% of Twitter traffic as “pointless babble”, or, as the rest of the world like to call it, [...]

244. On Twitter « MA Designing Social Software
     March 30th, 2010 at 4:55 am

     [...] Analytics” have two interesting articles on their research on usage and attention span on [...]

245. Exploring Twitter Further
     April 3rd, 2010 at 8:23 am

     [...] There are also examples (as above) of collective action – although this is not as common.  This survey is interesting as it tries to define all the different activities on Twitter – results [...]

246. Twitter: That pointless babble… Might not be so pointless | Web 2.What?
     April 6th, 2010 at 2:56 pm

     [...] Surely by now, you know a report a while back said that 40% of Twitter posts are pointless babble. [...]

247. The Elements of Communication: Tweetium (Tw) | KnowHR Blog
     April 12th, 2010 at 4:15 pm

     [...] History Although discovered in 2006, Tweetium, like many innovative communication elements, didn’t go viral until its debut at the 2007 South by Southwest festival. Since that time, a sadly disproportionate amount of the information conveyed through this medium has been defined as nothing other than “pointless babble.” [...]

248. OUPblog » Blog Archive » How Not to Tweet Twaddle
     April 20th, 2010 at 10:11 pm

     [...] problem is distinguishing your tweets from the 40 percent that are “pointless babble,” as a recent study found. Also, you need to decide whether you should tweet about your own experiences or concentrate on [...]

249. Anonymous
     May 4th, 2010 at 6:13 am

     [...] det twittras om. Källa: Pear Analytics. Grafik: Makt & [...]

250. Anonymous
     May 4th, 2010 at 10:57 pm

     I think this survey is interesting as it tries to define all the different activities on Twitter. Thank you.

251. Anonymous
     May 21st, 2010 at 8:01 am

     [...] Im Unternehmen gibt es z.B. keinen Spam und ‘Pointless Babble’ wie es die Twitterstudie 2009 von Pearanalytics zeigt, sondern hier dominieren Statusupdates (aus Meetings, Telkos, [...]

252. Lissa Rechtzigel
     June 15th, 2010 at 5:57 am

     Nice Post! I was searching for free classified advertising and classified related articles when I came across your website post on Bing. This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the share. I’ve saved this post for future reference Nice comments – Cheers

253. Twitter for fun … and profit | Positive Yarn
     June 30th, 2010 at 12:30 pm

     [...] the information at an introductory level, I did pick up a few things. For example, she quoted a 2009 survey done over a two-week period by Pear Analytics that found tweets fell into one of six categories (percentages are rounded [...]

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