Had a Ham Sandwich for Lunch: Twitter Babble

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Every wonder about all how many people are chirping out there in Twitterdom? Twitter at 100 million strong, while one of the largest social networks, pales in comparison to Facebook at 800 million. Granted, both figures are impressive, and considering the limitations of Twitter (140 characters, lack of visual), we could say it’s an entirely different animal, uh, bird, in its own right.

Besides the Twitter usage figure, some other interesting facts were revealed back in September by the company:

• Half of all users log in daily. A healthy percentage; likely those who have products and services to tout make up much of that figure.

• 40% of all Twitter users have not tweeted in the past month. Don’t have the stat, but I’m betting that everyone knows of someone who created an account, made one or two tweets, and hasn't been back since. Those folks likely account for much of that 40%.

• 230 million tweets a day. So, if we based that on those who log-in more than once per month, that’s close to 4 tweets per user. That’s a lot of chirping!

• 45% of tweets originate from mobile devices. People on the go! Not surprising. Sure hope they’re not tweeting while driving.

But wait, there’s more:

• According to a recent study by Semiocast, 39% of tweets are in English, followed by Japanese at 14%.

• Sysomos released study results in 2010 that determined a whopping 71% of tweets receive no response and only 6% of tweets are retweeted, while 23% are replied to.

And then there’s my favorite stat, to which I'll bestow the “ham sandwich” award, from Pear Analytics:

• 40.55% of all Tweets are “pointless babble”.

My curiousity took me straight to Twitter, where I found a few gems that fit the mold. No snickering!

• “My stomach hurts and it's making me want to go home and do nothing =/” - Hope your employer doesn’t see this one!

• “I get the stupidest songs stuck in my head then I look like a idiot cuz I sing them all day” - Sure hope you work alone.

• “I'm working on a story, and there are five main characters. I have to kill one of them. Thinking about who to kill off hmm.....”   - Seriously? You HAVE to kill one?

• “Shopping tip: You can get shoes for 85 cents at the bowling alley” - Is this suggesting that I RENT the bowling shoes, then STEAL them?

• “I need a strong man” - Uh, honey, Twitter may not be the best place to look for that.

Perhaps those pointless babblers need to be reminded that this is a public forum? That’s what’s so nice about Facebook and Google+; YOU control how public or private your message is. Twitter, has Direct Messages, sure, but hey, that’s only to one person at a time.

I’m proposing we start a club to stamp out babble on Twitter and make it more intelligent again, similar to what Google+ was until about a month ago.

And how we do accomplish just that? We don’t. It’s a public forum and all those folks eating ham sandwiches for lunch have as much right to be there as anyone else. The sad truth is that unless we take advantage of lists on Twitter or just don’t follow back most tweeps, then we’ll just have to put up with it.

I’m opting for the list solution. For more on that, click here for Twitter’s primer on lists.

modlandUSA is on Facebook and Google+ too!