Study: Twitter is 40 percent 'pointless babble'

Surprise! A full 40.5 percent of posts on Twitter--or 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 tweets.

Pear Analytics published its investigation, which was conducted through a series of random samplings from the Twitter public timeline, into the different species of tweets on Wednesday. That means that only public tweets were indexed; the numbers could be different if friends-only accounts were taken into consideration as well. (Obviously, that would be much tougher to analyze.)

There's some interesting stuff in there. Despite some Twitter critics' insistence that the microblogging service is loaded with self-promoters, Pear Analytics only classified 5.85 percent of tweets as "self promotion."

The other categories were "news" (3.6 percent), "spam" (also lower than I'd expect, at 3.75 percent), and "pass-along value" (8.7 percent). Granted, sometimes there's plenty of gray area (is linking to a blog post you wrote "pass-along value" or "self-promotion"? shouldn't tweeting about breakfast too often be considered spam?) but it's pretty cool regardless.

"We thought the news category would have more weight than dead last," the report read, "since this seems to be contrary to Twitter's new position of being the new source of news and events."

That might be a bit of a buzzkill for Twitter's team, which is pretty vocal about wanting the service to be a ubiquitous communication standard. Regardless, the news about the relatively low levels of spam is interesting--for some perspective, about 90 percent of e-mail is spam.

[veilx]

I could've told you that... all i do it Tweet "LEMONADE", and "I LIKE TOYTULLZ"



[CNET editors' note: Promotional link deleted]

[jag0]

I wonder what the percentage is of stupid little emo kids who praise anything that has to do with the subpar vampire movie & books "Twilight" :-/

well thats dumb. most people who classify themselves as "emo" don't even like twilight. it's mostly tween and lower aged teenge girls.

[jag0]

It's all the same thing ;-)

[ikramerica--2008]

emo and goth aren't the same thing. two different groups of idiots! Don't you watch South Park?

[toosday]

Actually, according to many studies, kids don't use Twitter. It's mostly adults. I'm not sure if the adults are talking about Twilight, though :)

[ddesy]

I was figuring that closer to 80% was pointless...

[Mergatroid Mania]

I would agree with that. Stopped using it. Waste of time.

[Renegade Knight]

Likewise and I'd question the usefulness of the 20% remaining.

[ikramerica--2008]

Actually, 40% is pointless babble, 40% is POINTED babble, 10% is mindless drivel, and the remaining 10% is simply a waste of time.

[ZetaZeta_]

Actually, it's kind of cool that 60% (well over half) of what's said on Twitter isn't pointless babble. That's a lot of tweets with at least some meaning.

[Seaspray0]

Rumor has it if you stick a babble fish in you ear it still sounds makes no sense.

[myles taylor]

40%! You've got to be kidding me. From my experience, Twitter is over 95% pointless babble. That's not to say some of it isn't entertaining or interesting. A lot of our entertainment is pointless babble, but Twitter is even more than most.

[sexydaddio]

Who cares if it's pointless! I love it and I enjoy it! I love to babble on about nothing!

[gggg sssss]

which is the perfect example of pointless

[arshield]

Seriously, one person's pointless drivel is another person's conversation. News I understand, and spam is probably fairly easy to identify. But splitting the difference between conversation and drivel, pretty hard.

[EvanSei]

I started tweeting for the pointless babble alone, I come here to be sensible

[admoore]

Someone needs to do a study in the percentage of pointless babble in human communications in general as a comparison. I'd wager it's not under 40%.

[ikramerica--2008]

Actually, such studies are done and you are correct.

Also, there are studies about humor, that demonstrate that most people that are considered "funny" (not comedians, but people) are really charming and good looking, but don't say anything funny at all. Transcripts of recorded conversations prove this.

So, something to remember. People say nothing most of the time, and when someone says "I want to meet someone with a good sense of humor" what they are actually looking for is someone they find attractive. Duh!

[caroline.mccarthy]

That's really quite interesting. Thanks for bringing it up!

[ikramerica--2008]

The "funny=attractive/dynamic" stuff is quite interesting. And you can see this in practice when you go to a party. Look at who congregates around who, who leads the conversation, who laughs at that dialogue and how they laugh. What's really going on is nervous laughter (not uncomfortable nervous), where people want the speaker to like them and automatically respond with the feedback that person is looking for. If they are telling a "funny" story, people will laugh. A "sad" story, people will feel empathy. But if you just read a transcript of what was said, it's mostly droll stories or half sentences saying very little of substance, and saying very little different than what the less attractive person says on a day to day basis. I know Yale psychology department has studied this quite a bit while studying emotions and communications.

[KillerChihuahua]

Indeed. One needs only to glance at any forum, listen at any water cooler.

[Vegaman_Dan]

The only pointless babble I can see is anyone who would pay for such an obvious study to be done in the first place. :)

By the way, a recent study found that 95% of all rain is wet to the touch.

[The_happy_switcher]

So the other 5 percent is 'dry' rain? Please provide link for this strange phenomena.

[gggg sssss]

like a dry martini?

[tech_crazy]

You are all hilarious! Keep it up!

[Mergatroid Mania]

I still say Twitter is for Twits. Rather spend my time reading on sites like CNET than reading what the twits have to say.

[billd888]

They had to do a study to determine this??? What a colossal waste of time and energy, according to their study only 3.6 percent is actually useful, the news, and you can get the news from so many other sources without all the drivel.

[mattyc09]

Just 40%? That sounds far too low to me. I would say it is easily 90% 'pointless babble'.

[gggg sssss]

99.9% is more like it with a 1 % margin of error.

[NikEst]

The thing I hate about twitter is that new anchors (on TV, live TV) sit there on twitter. I wish I could get paid to use twitter. Then again, I can't use twitter and still feel like I have something to live for.

[jsjbingxi]

yes, twitter is very popular, many people like it very much, and many of them like to share photos, felling and other things on it, and also you can share a good website url on the twitter, you can follow others, and the others can follow you too.http://www.epathchina.com/xbox-accessories-c-293.html, there are many kinds of xbox 360 accessories here.

[Sporlo]

The percent of TWEET spam may be low, but I'll bet the percent of spam ACCOUNTS is much larger. I only have like 5 legitimate followers (barely ever use the site), but within the first month of joining, I got like TEN followers who were just trying to sell something. I found that if the account has even a remotely hot girl as their picture and they follow hundreds of people, they are almost guaranteed to be spam accounts.

[jltnol--2008]

This is news? This article is 100% pointless babble. Most of whats on the web is pointless, and just about everything on cable TV is pretty pointless, too.

And facebook? 60% pointless.

[bob1xxxx]

Hmmm really my experience its 100%

[missionboy]

I guess that makes it a better form of communication than email, since email is 90+% spam.

[dwightmlee]

This is a ridiculous statement! Everyone knows Twitter is 99.9 percent worthless babble ? not a mere 40%! Who are the ?cheese whiz-brained nitwits? who wrote this article?!