Most Twitter feeds are ‘Pointless Babble’: Report

A report from Pear Research finds 40 per cent of tweets on the popular social networking site Twitter fall into the category of 'Pointless Babble, 'raising further questions about the commercial viability of the social networking site. Placing a close second at 37.55 per cent was 'Conversational' with 'Pass-Along Value' coming in third at a distant 8.7 per cent of the tweets captured.

The report was researched by media analytics firm Pear Research, which took 2,000 tweets from the public timeline - in English and in the United States - over a two-week period, capturing tweets in half-hour increments, and categorized them into six categories. The results are likely to come as a shock to some.

'Pointless Babble' led with 40.55 per cent of the total tweets captured. Coming in fourth, after 'Conversational' and 'Pass-Along Value,' was the 'Self-Promotion' category, ranking fourth on the list with 8.7 per cent.

With 3.6 per cent, the 'News' category ranked slightly below 'Spam' at 3.75 per cent.

The study revealed a wealth of information on how Twitter users use the service. It found correlations between the type of tweet and the day of the week it tends to occur more frequently.

For example, 'retweets' happen most on Tuesdays. The category with the largest gap between the highest occurrence and the second highest occurrence was self-promotion, where the highest occurrence was 8.5 per cent of the tweets on Wednesdays, and the second highest occurrence at 6.25 per cent on Tuesdays.