Slashdot Mirror
50% of Tweets Consumed Come From .05% of Users
ajensen201102 writes "A mere 20,000 Twitter users steal almost half of the spotlight on Twitter, which now ropes in a billion tweets every week. That means only 0.05% of the social network's user base attracts attention, according to a new Yahoo Research study. From the article: 'Like findings in previous studies, the researchers for this one conclude Twitter resembles an information-sharing hub rather than a social network, with the top generators garnering huge follower tallies but not following their content consumers in return.'"
Twitter is such a shit social tool I actually started unfollowing all my friends; it's still great for following news feeds, though.
The only thing I use Twitter for is for hearing about updates to Minecraft and when the occasional celebrity/corporate scandal breaks out because of a "tweet". Considering I see Twitter mentioned nearly every where I have to wonder how much they are spending to generate such a large buzz for such a prosaic service.
Twitter stopped being relevant technologically when "everyone" got smart phones which enabled them to do updates bigger than a SMS while away from their computers.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
"90 percent of everything is crap"
A lot of people really have nothing to say!
Please see below and other things to do with pot and kettle ethnicity.
I read that as "0.05% of Twitter users have something interesting to say."
Foreword: I am not taking part in any social network (well, if you exclude LinkedIn but I am a completely passive user also in that case).
From the outside, social networking is about showing off connections and getting the illusion of being in touch with people that, in the real world, wouldn't give a damn of you. All those people telling you their private business, they would never talk with you if they had to call you on the phone or send you an email.
On the other hand, they are still cool for getting in touch with old friends, even though generally these contacts stay very superficial. A global directory of people would be enough to achieve the same goal, without all the fanfare.
And as far as information is concerned, they are a convenient way of generating news streams without the hassle of putting a web page or an RSS feed, so they have allowed also people that don't have anything interesting to say to let the world know about it.
> Twitter resembles an information-sharing hub rather than a social network, with the top generators garnering huge follower tallies but not following their content consumers in return
Yeah, there you go.
No surprise.
This isn't really so surprising. Just like Twitters, most of the world's men have only shagged a few women, while a few guys have done it with hundreds. A huge number of people live on a dollar a day, but some guys at the top can make over a billion a year. Most entertainers are unknown wedding singers, but a few are known by everyone on the planet.
Not saying it's right or wrong, just these kinds of distribution occur.
You can only steal what anyone else wants. Else it's just taking it without a challenge.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The real secret of success of twitter is that it makes the other 99.5% of narcissists believe that what they write is Really Important. Remember the Twitter Revolution in the Islamic Republic of Iran? Twitter users really thought that their tweets were important, and all they had to do was wish hard enough and the theocracy would fall. Strangely enough, it didn't happen. I know, I don't get it, either. How many bloggers changed their page backgrounds to green? Still, the religious nuts didn't get the signal. If they would have all had twitter accounts, they would have seen just how much opposition there was, and surely they would have resigned - to avoid the devastating ridicule of twitter users if nothing else. Another thing: either there needs to be a universal translator or these theocrats need to have mandatory English lessons, otherwise how can they understand the depth of condemnation the world sends their way?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Large amount of traffic from small amount of users, and a large majority of those are spam.
New Economic Perspectives
Twitter was originally conceived as a way for everyone to voice their thoughts and provide visibility to others into their lives. After this, my only conclusion is that NO, technology by itself won't make everybody famous and followed. Things happen in the twitterverse just as they happen in the real world, that is, most people disappear in their irrelevance while a few get followed and admired by everybody. Sad but true, you're lucky if you even get your 15 minutes of fame...
I've been using Twitter for around half a year now. In some ways it's highly useful. I use it mainly to share links and some casual observations. There are times when I participate in brief discussions as well.
There's one thing the whole concept fails at, though: following. The system is just too general by default. There is no simple way for me to cherry pick topics I'm interested in. I know there are hashtags but they don't quite fit the bill. I would like to be able to combine these concepts somehow (follow this person's tweets tagged this and that).
Perhaps it would make sense to provide specific pipes (ie. sports, art, programming, ...) that can be used to transmit specific type of information and in which other people can subscribe to. I believe this would provide a nice compromise, at least for me.
It's possible I have been missing something obvious all this time. Just thought to elaborate on my issues with Twitter. :)
The definition of celebrity is "Someone who is known by more people than they know" - of course Charlie Sheen is followed by more people than he follows. He also appears in more celebrity magazines than his followers.
Next you'll be surprised that there are more people reading Linus Torvald's blog than he reads in return.
I use Twitter to keep in contact with a few people I know in person (20-30), and to keep up with a few people who say things I'm interested (about the same again). Same as with Livejournal/Blogs.
No, the average person isn't interested in whether I went to the cinema and enjoyed Rango - but (some of) my friends are. So I wouldn't expect to get followed by 10,000 people - just by my friends.
My Journal
Since very few people originate most tweets with high following, corporations and advertisers would woo them. They will set up their paid tweeters backed up by huge number of paid assistants. The followers will realize the conflict of interest and calibrate their truthiness of tweeters. Eventually it will reduce to a second rung of media, like bloggers, less scrutinized, highly fragmented.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Are you sure you know the english language?
Can you eat Tweets? I doubt it...
It just shows that Twitter follows Zipf's Law (or at least Pareto's Law). As more and more people join Twitter, the balance gets shifted more and more to the top few.
Twitter, to me, is just the combination of one fairly new concept - cell phone texting - and one old and antiquated concept - the POTS "party line". Consequently it takes interpersonal gossip and makes it broadcast gossip..
The only thing I want to read in 140 words or less is the weather.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
georgia stone holycost 'math'. talk about getting buggered again, in the name of god, again?
That's one thing I can't understand about Twitter — how can you have a conversation with arbitrary people, and have others view that conversation, if only Tweets inside follow-cliques appear on a person's timeline? Do conversations instead happen on hashtag streams, or Is it expected that one should monitor the "mention" tab so you can talk with people you don't follow (even though people watching your timeline will only see your side of the conversation).
When it was getting of the ground, Twitter made a big deal about how it was unlike email because it allowed people to receive messages without an expectation of having to reply. They've quietened-down about this, possibly because the concept of speaking without listening is a rather elitist one (which is why the elite love it).
But I can see how Twitter crushed RSS. It's much easier to create a personal feed via Twitter that RSS, just like pre-fab blogs killed off personal Geocities-type websites.
I've been using Twitter for a while now, and it's very frustrating to try to use it for what for which it claims to be its purpose. As the article points out, mostly everyone seems to follow a very small number of people who seem to generate most of the comments. The rest of us, trying to use it as an actual social vehicle, find it fails in that because for what it's worth, no one wants to communicate back if they ever achieve a social level of achievement with Twitter. It's like being part of a social club that has barriers on the doors, but everyone wants to get in, even though there's really nothing going on in the back room. As a mid-level writer (meaning my following is dismal at best), Twitter mainly serves as a device for me to receive information rather tahn to project it. When I project, it's really not much of a sensation (aside from a few of my stuffed animals who follow me religiously). So, it leaves me following trends, rather than actually being able to participate in them. What I do find fascinating about Twitter, however, is the tendency to see people who are celebrities attempt to defend their celebrity by trying to play their part, even though their capabilities are completely lacking. A good example is Mindy Kaling (the woman who plays the Indian girl on The Office). Her tweets are kind of sad, because she's very much an example of someone who wants to be seen as cool and funny, but all she really has to her name is the credit she made from The Office. Now, I understand she's a very talented writer and actress, but her tweets don't reveal that. She comes off as trying way too hard, and for someone who is one of those listeners (rather than someone followed), I find it to be hilarious because it shows the social phenomenon for what it really is. What it really seems to be is that Twitter hasn't found its true groove yet. It feels like it's on the edge of finding it, however, and I suspect that it's going to evolve into something much more interactive (where you do communicate with celebrity), or it is going to be the jumping off point for the next technology that actually does it, possibly emerging with a technology that allows for people to become celebrities, rather than as a vehicle to communicate with, or receive communication from.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
Who would've thought that the public at large would find yet another tool to deify and revere the drug taking *'upper class'. Most people simply cannot be without leader figures it seems. Twitter's a giant pile of shit that the media seem to have glommed onto in some desperate attempt to remain current and hip, and they routinely talk about it and the internet in general in a most basic way. Understanding just how the internet works, and the sort of technology that goes into it should be a requirement before you can use it to be honest. I mean you wouldn't drive a car without knowing how to change the oil right? ... oh, wait.
... and they thought we'd all sucumb to some brilliant and devilish dictatorship, if only!
*They are in fact, not the 'upper class', but simply reflections of the worshippers themselves who got lucky on some stupid reality show about eating someone elses shit.
I suppose no thread about twitter and social networking in general would be complete without a reference to Idiocracy.
People have nothing to say and no one cares anyway! At least we can back this up with research. Wonderful.
I was wondewing why I haven't been getting my tweets! They been consumed by a tiny puhcentage of da usahs.
Sewiouswy... "consume"?
While Pareto principle splits the data into 2 distinct categories, the Power law is continuous :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law
But they both say the same. A few individual have the most.
Only, as the power law is continuous, using it, if you tell it how many friends or followers you have on FaceBook/Twitter/Slashdot/etc. it can predict how many other users are in your situation.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Wait until AT&T hears about this!
It feels kind of strange, but I've never had a Twitter account, and seem to be living okay without it. I have "consumed" postings, mostly from people who put their feed on their website or some such, but without an account of my own, it's hard to keep up with conversations or threads. From the article it sounds like I'm not really missing much. Maybe in 5 or so years I'll be fighting it out with a New Guinean tribesman as "the last man without a Twitter account".
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
It's just like a real live social network? Glad we wrapped this one up, experiment successful apparently. Besides, isn't it nice to know that the introverts need no longer be bothered by the popular extroverts taking up oxygen in the real world when they can be blathering away online or following celebrity blather? I think of it as a solution to the info sphere version of second hand smoke.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Otherwise more commonly known as the 80-20 rule. You see it everywhere... even if not in those exact percentages.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Twatter.
Anyone who hasn't figured out by now that twitter is really only good for advertising and ego-tripping attention whores probably is an ego-tripping attention whore.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
So Let me get this straight....1,000,000,000 tweets a week. 20,000 users make up ~1/2 of them =>500,000,000 tweets per week for these 20,000 users. 500,000,000/20,000 = 25,000 tweets per week per 'power user.' (or 148.8 tweets per hour, or 2.5 tweets per minute) hmmmmm.
I dunno. seems little excessive to me. Maybe, just maybe, something in this report is wrong.
Not sure I buy this. If 20k are responsible for 500 million per week, that means those users average a tweet every ~15 seconds, 16 hours per day, 7 days per week. And since that's an average, some users would be tweeting at an even higher frequency. That just doesn't seem sustainable; wouldn't they starve by the end of the week? Or have carpal tunnel syndrome by the end of the month?
Reminds me of all those statistics about who pays the most taxes, etc.
Those are the only tweets I look for.
The UI is poor (FB isn't much better), but this will improve over time. A combination of third party tools, search engines and metadata (tagging) is needed to fully access it. Some of the interesting / useful interactions are narrowcasted, which is the opposite of the celebrity-driven content that comprises a large percent of the message traffic. Examples: tweeting during conferences, customer support for highly specific products or services, announcements from (smaller?) trusted sources, and time-dependent messages.
going to the bathroom #takeadump