Tweet Density less than Stellar

If you use Twitter chances are you have seen the reports on what are the most popular types of tweets. Pear Analytics released a new report last Wednesday in fact. This report sampled 2,000 random tweets over the course of 5 days and then broke them down into the type of tweet they were.

(WebHost Blog)The study found that the bulk of all tweets were quite pointless; 40% in fact. 37% of all tweets were chunks of conversations between a handful of people (a dialogue that does not encompass the entire network). Spam, oddly enough, only accounted for 4%. Making 81% of your average tweets mostly worthless to the average user.

Re-tweets accounted for 9%, self promotion accounted for 6%, and news brought up the rear with only 4%.
Pear Analytics was of course besides themselves when it came to the data. They figured news, spam, and self-promotion would both be higher and that conversational tweets would be a lot less.

For myself, I am only surprised at the spam category. However it makes sense. Two things that Twitter as going for it in when it comes to spam is the fact that you can easily unsubscribe from anyone who is spamming you. People over look the occasional spam or self-promotion from those who give quality tweets so the density of both will be low. However, if we look at email, spam started out very small and now it takes up more than 90% of all email sent globally. For spam to work on Twitter, it will probably have to stem from hijacked accounts, but I digress.

As far as being a news medium, well that greatly depends on who you follow. The average person may get involved with one or two seriously big events once or twice in a lifetime. However, if you are following journalists, news outlets, and the like, well Twitter then becomes your RSS feed. To increase the amount of useful resources you receive through Twitter follow bloggers. Its not too hard to tailor your channel to receive quality tweets, nor should it be a chore for you to tweet meaningful tweets to others. Simply ask yourself before you press enter, would I read this?

About David Dunlap:
Over the past ten years David has been a prolific author of hundreds of blogs, commentaries and reviews found here on WebHostBlog.com, as well as WebHostMagazine.com and other sites around the Internet. David manages the daily operations at both WebHostBlog and Web Host Magazine & Buyer's Guide, and as the head editor, David uses his unique analytical skills to ensure that both sites maintain their integrity and tough, but fair minded, reputations. Prior to his active career analyzing the Web Host industry, David specialized in networking and communications for the U.S. government. David's expertise in traditional and search engine marketing has helped boost companies both inside and outside of the Web Host industry.