Slashdot Mirror
Of 1.2 Billion Twitter Posts, 71% Are Ignored
destinyland writes "1.2 billion Twitter 'tweets' were analyzed over two months by analytics company Sysomos, who concluded that a whopping 71% of them got no reaction whatsoever — no online responses, and no Twitter 'retweets.' 'Only a small number of users actually have the ability to engage on Twitter in a significant way,' the researchers conclude, noting that just 6% of Twitter's status updates ever get retweeted (while 23% get a reply). And among those status updates, 85% have exactly one response, while only 1.53% of Twitter conversations are more than three levels deep — where a reply receives a response which then generates a second reply." I am astounded by the claim that nearly three out of ten tweets actually do get any response.
Why are we assuming that tweets are intended to net a response?
You mean to tell me that the majority of people actually do not care about things like "just went to the bathroom" or "I am on a date right now?" Next you'll be telling me that most blogs receive less than 5 unique visitors per year or that the personal webpage I made when I was 13 was ignored!
Is this really news? I guess the precise number counts as news; I would have placed it somewhere closer to 99%.
Palm trees and 8
I don't use Twitter as any kind of social network, but when I tweet that "The school is closed to due to snow" I know that it isn't ignored, even if no replies are received. In fact, I do sometimes get replied - via e-mail.
29% of tweets aren't ignored. That is an incredibly good hit rate, for what is essentially a write-only, vanity medium. Imagine if that same level of response could be replicated in real life: nearly one-third of the mutterings and grumbles that we hear all the time elicited a response (apart from "Oh, do shut up!") we'd spend all day engaged in pointless and empty conversations with complete strangers.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It doesn't mean that people are reading it either. And even when they do, they may be skimming through lots and lots of "tweets", and yours just wasn't worth paying attention to. I.e. you tweeted garbage, and people stepped over it.
That said, I know at least one person who, when getting an IM call from someone, auto-opens the Twitter page for that account, so she can pretend she knew what was going on. Those shallow enough to use Twitter as a diary seem to think she actually reads their tweets regularly and gives half a damn.
Me? I only look at "tweets" as part of investigations. That's more than enough. I couldn't care less whether "cute kitty is cute" or you listen to D.J. Anus.
What percentage of slashdot news posts are ignored? Comments? Sounds like the infamous 71/29 rule.
Considering that the original (and to some extent current) "purpose" of Twitter is for posting where you are and what you are doing at the moment (see the slogan, "What are you doing right now?"), most tweets are probably not intended to be replied to anyway. And in the real world, that is also my experience.
I am astounded by the claim that nearly three out of ten tweets actually do get any response.
(Well, hey, parent got +1 Interesting for repeating what was in the summary, so it’s worth a shot.)
Not at all. I don't use Twitter, but the vast majority of Facebook posts I read I don't react to via Facebook. I still read them, and am glad that the person posted them. A smaller number I click "Like", but there's not much else to say. Only a handful do I ever comment on (which would be the "retweet" or "respond" option on twitter).
That said, I found the signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter *much* lower... which is why I use FB instead. :-)
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.