Why Engineers Don't Like Twitter

PabloSandoval48 writes, "A recent EE Times survey of 285 engineers found that 85% don't use Twitter. More than half indicated that the statement 'I don't really care what you had for breakfast' best sums up their feelings about it." Reader mattnyc99 notes a related article in which the authors analyzed the content of tweets during a recent World Cup game, finding 76% of them to be useless. "Out of 1,000 tweets with the #worldcup hashtag during the game, only 16 percent were legitimate news and 7.6 percent were deemed 'legitimate conversation' — which leaves 6 percent spam, 24 percent self-promotion, about 17 percent re-tweets, and a whopping 29 percent of useless observation (like this). Is the mainstream media making too big a deal out of the avalanche of World Cup tweets, or is the world literally flooding the zone?"

Comments

Twitter is useful?

[CrimsonAvenger]

"Out of 1,000 tweets with the #worldcup hashtag during the game, only 16 percent were legitimate news and 7.6 percent were deemed 'legitimate conversation' -- which leaves 6 percent spam, 24 percent self-promotion, about 17 percent re-tweets, and a whopping 29 percent of useless observation

I suspect very strongly that if you were to ask 1000 random people, you'd get a very similar opinion of the content of /.

In other words, "Surprise! People are different, and some aren't interested in the things you happen to be interested in. And that doesn't make them (or you) defective."

The execution tweet was a good one

[pgmrdlm]

http://www.techiezine.com/execution-anounced-on-twitter/

But thats what I use twitter for, to follow the release of news stories.

Only 76% Useless

[alvinrod]

That's actually a better signal to noise ratio than most forms of communication. Given that 90% of anything is crud, is is really surprising that Twitter isn't any different?

Self Limiting

[decipher_saint]

I like Twitter because it's an easy way for me and my developer friends to share transient tidbits like new tools, quick questions and interesting links.

I don't follow people who use it as a journal and I don't really concern myself with those who follow me.

I don't see why more IT people use it this way. It beats sending e-mail or trying to maintain contacts via multiple IM networks (some of which are blocked by various employers).

Easy to Search, Summarize, & Aggregate...

[weston]

But somehow the media has bought into Twitter as some kind of technological marvel. "ZOMG! People are tweeting about the World Cup! Let's put those tweets on our show, so we can pretend to be technologically savvy and relevant!"'

I think there's more too it than a desperate attempt to appear relevant -- the features of Twitter tend to fall in a certain sweet spot of interest for traditional broadcasters. For one thing, tweets are just about the right length for soundbite-driven short-cycle media. For another, it's really easy to search and in theory at least get a feel for zeitgeist by looking at trending topics in aggregate -- and profit-driven broadcast media is all about "eyeballs," so they're naturally interested in what people are (in theory) interested in.

I used to think Twitter was worthless

[macemoneta]

But after observing it for a while, I've come to some conclusions as well.

Watching an individual tweeting is like watching a neuron firing; it doesn't appear to be doing anything useful. Stand back a little, and you can see that neurons (or those that tweet) are parts of functional groups. Step back further and you have a conscious brain.

This is the way I started to look at Twitter, and the analogy seems to work. The first place you find out about major events now? Twitter. First some tweets ("Hey, did anyone near xxx feel something?"). Then comes the higher level analysis ("Did the paint factory explode? No, it was an earthquake!"). Then comes the sensory input (twipics, twitvids). Then the emotional response ("OMG, so many people injured!").

If you look at Twitter this way, it's almost like looking into the hive-mind. It's very interesting to observe, whether you participate or not. There are multiple search and aggregation engines, though they can lag realtime significantly during major events. It's better to have 'probes' (follows) into various areas of interest.