Data analytics provider, Pear Analytics, set out to study the contents of tweets to determine if, in fact, we’re all just sharing mindless drivel on Twitter or if there was something more significant going on.
Their findings indicate 40.55% of tweets are indeed pointless babble.
Looking at 2,000 tweets over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value.
The upshot is that “Conversational” tweeting was a very close second at 37.55%, and “Pass-Along Value” was a distant third at 8.7% of the tweets captured.
Interestingly, twitterers are more likely to pass-along links and other information on Mondays. News is most popular on Tuesdays – which fits the usual PR model. Apparently, most news is passed around Twitter around 2PM on Tuesdays. SPAM was consistent every day, but was second-to-last in overall frequency.