Pear Analytics has recently released a report that claims that 40% of tweets are “pointless babble”. This study is reviewed here by Mashable who cite this as not being “favourable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter.”
How disappointing. Only 40 per cent? I would have hoped for rather more. How disappointing also that Mashable chooses to take the view (along with Pear Analytics) that Twitter’s value and importance lies only when “something more intellectual is going on” rather than in tweets that fall into “I’m eating a sandwich now category”.
The whole point of Twitter is that it is nonsense – connected nonsense – and this makes it a whole different form of nonsense from the nonsense that has gone before. The “I am eating a sandwich now” tweet is, in essence, no different from the “I am watching a plane crash land on the Hudson River” tweet. The relevance of both of those tweets is not determined in advance by the tweeter, but by the way in which that tweet establishes its context through connection with other tweets and bits of digital information that relate to the subject (or conversation) it deals with. In the case of sandwich eating, that context is probably quite restricted and the level of connection pretty small. In the case of plane crashes – its probably pretty big.
There is no point in looking at Twitter the way we looked at traditional media and attaching a value to it based on its ability to restrict itself to information whose relevance is determined by mass interest.
Take Albert Einstein for example. I am sure that 40% of what came out of his mouth would fall into Pear’s mindless babble category. We didn’t either dismiss him or demand the restriction of his verbal output to “lofty” pronouncements on space and time. Einstein could talk about what he had for lunch without us thinking any the lesser of him. Of course, if he had written a scientific paper on it we might have thought it a little strange, but that is because in the old world influence or relevance was determined by place, not space. So when Einstein had something he wanted to say to the community of physicists he said it in a place where all those physicists were gathered (a publication or conference). Nowardays we use the same place (or tool such as Twitter) to say everything and influence or relevance is determined by the spaces (conversations) into which our utterances get drawn. These may be very big conversations or they may be very small conversations. It matters not which.
Take also your head. The individual fragments of information that sit on your mental shelves, when viewed collectively, would present a pretty good picture of pointless babble. This same information, when viewed connectedly, constitutes intelligence.
It is a shame that people who should know better (i.e. Mashable) still don’t appear to have a real understanding of why social media is different and can only view it through the lens of what has gone before.
At no point did we try to tell people how they should be Tweting. We simply wanted to do a study to see how people were using Twitter. We wondered what days and times were best for getting a RT, when people should post something important. If people were actually listening to one another.
Everyone seems to be very upset with the pointless babble category. What people forget is, that if you have 2000 followers, what percentage of those people really care that you just ate a sandwich. Sure, 3 or 4 people might find it interesting, but to the other 1995 people, it’s pointless.
Sure, most people filter who they follow. But when looking at the public timeline, we didn’t have the luxury of only following those we found interesting. We had to see everyone’s posts. There are a lot of people on there who post truly random crap. But, everyone likes to think whatever they Tweet must be some little nugget of great wisdom. I think that’s why so many people are offended by the term. We didn’t mean to offend. But at the same time, I really don’t need to know every little thing that happens throughout your day. Some people feel the need to post every single little thing. Maybe your mother following you on Twitter is happy to know you just ate a ham sandwich, or just took a deuce, but, most other people aren’t.
Sarah – you have done it again! Failed to understand what is going on in social media except through the lens of how we used to do things.
Who are you to say “There are a lot of people on there who post truly random crap”. Your definition of random crap is based on the assumption that it has to be relevant to lots of people to stop being random crap. This is the definition we used in the old one-to-many, mass message, traditional media environment.
But to use the words of Clay Shirky “That world has gone, never to return”
The networked world of social media is driven by random crap. It is both what constitutes most of its content and what gives it its power.
If you want to understand social media give this a read http://richardstacy.com/2009/06/05/andrew-keens-head-and-the-shift-from-institutions-to-processes/ and if you really want to get into this check out (warning – very long article) http://richardstacy.com/2008/11/20/gutenberg-and-the-social-media-revolution-an-investigation-of-the-world-where-it-costs-nothing-to-distribute-information/
I declare Fridays as Pointless Post Day, it’s the Casual Friday for Social Media!!
See the official declaration:
http://www.theyippie.com/TheYippie.com_/The_Yippie/Entries/2009/8/31_Yipsdom_of_the_Day.html
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