Miracles Can Happen
8 Sep
A study from Pear Analytics revealed that 40.55% of tweets are “pointless babble.” In addition to those tweets, the report claimed, 5.85% of tweets are self-promotional, while another 3.75% are just flat out spam (I’m sure that taking it out to two decimal places lends more credibility to the statistic).
So imagine my excitement when I saw a blog post titled Nineteen Free Twitter Tools that Turn Tweets into Knowledge.
I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for a tool that could turn my Twitter buddies’ useless babble, self-promotional crap, and spamtweets into knowledge. (I’m pretty confident that my own tweets were categorized as “conversational”, so I can’t imagine these tools will have much impact on what I tweet).
I don’t know how these tools work, but it just goes to show how amazing technology is. Think about it: Sixteen (or more) years of formal education couldn’t help turn what many people say into something intelligible, but thanks to technological advancements, gibberish can now be transformed into knowledge.
And who said miracles can’t happen?
I didn’t even look at the 19 Free Twitter Tools… It was bound to happen, it was inevitable. A study that has turned conversation of 140 character parcels that are measured in pointless babble, self-promotional or spam. But then there is news, conversation and pass along.
Pear states:
“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. Twi4er is not closed in the same manner. Anyone can follow your status updates.”
But on my Twitter site it states (after choosing to protect your tweets):
“Your tweets are currently protected; only those you approve will receive your tweets. You will not appear on the public timeline. Tweets posted previously may still be publicly visible in some places.”
So unless I am mistaken a key component of Twitter is being misunderstood by Pear. You have the ability to protect your Tweets hence the feed of people you receive could have a very different mix. This is a major factor that seems to be forgotten and conclusions made without it. IF one controls the people who follow them and also has control on who they follow the mix that they describe will be very different.
Seems to me what one needs to be aware of are those who deems themselves knowledgeable but in fact are the very opposite. If Pear Analytics ever tweets they will need a new classification. Guess what it will be?
@Gene: My tweets are protected as well. I’m thinking that, together, our tweets might have pushed the babble count over 50%.
Dude, it’s all about story telling… If you pay enough attention to my stuff over the next, say, 6 to 20 years, it’s all going to be more than worth it, I promise.
Follow me @jordancohenpr
God it’s good to have you back Ron.
@Jordan: I’ve been following your stuff for 3 years already. Look where’s it gotten me. Toiling away in relative obscurity on some crappy little blog.
this made me lol so hard i lmao’d my rofl.
Babble lies in the eye of the beholder.
@Shari: Not that I’m looking to argue with you, but apparently Pear Analytics disagrees with you. I guess babble is something that can be scientifically identified. What I’d like to know is if they found any tweets that they considered to be “useful babble”.