{"id":155776,"date":"2010-01-08T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/is_twitter_a_mental_vacuum.php"},"modified":"2010-01-08T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-08T23:30:00","slug":"is-twitter-a-mental-vacuum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/155776","title":{"rendered":"Is Twitter a Mental Vacuum?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"twitter_logo.png\" src=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/twitter_logo.png\" vspace=\"5px\" hspace=\"5px\" \/>When we talk to our less technologically-inclined friends about <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/\">Twitter<\/a>, we often run across the objection that they really don&#8217;t care what so-and-so ate for lunch today or what movie they are seeing tonight. And every time, we try to extol all the other benefits of the world&#8217;s most popular microblogging service. But could we be wrong? Is Twitter mostly people talking about themselves and what they ate for lunch?<font style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">digg_url = 'http:\/\/digg.com\/business_finance\/Is_Twitter_a_Mental_Vacuum';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'normal';<\/script><script src=\"http:\/\/digg.com\/tools\/diggthis.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/font><font style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">tweetmeme_url = 'http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/is_twitter_a_mental_vacuum.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/tweetmeme.com\/i\/scripts\/button.js\"><\/script><\/font><\/p>\n<p>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.textwise.com\">SemanticHacker<\/a>, the blog of contextual ad platform <a href=\"http:\/\/textwise.com\/\">Textwise<\/a>, has <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.textwise.com\/?p=222\">crunched some numbers<\/a> and we may have to eat our hat.<\/p>\n<p align=\"right\"><em>Sponsor<\/em><br \/><a href='http:\/\/d.ads.readwriteweb.com\/ck.php?n=a6d5ead9&amp;cb=17695' ><img src='http:\/\/d.ads.readwriteweb.com\/avw.php?zoneid=14&amp;cb=17695&amp;n=a6d5ead9' border='0' alt='' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Parlez vous Twitterspeak?<\/h2>\n<p>The blog used Twitter&#8217;s streaming API to gather nearly 9 million tweets from over 2 million individual users. Before looking at the data for meaning, the company first took a look at the language distribution of their sample. <br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"twitter-langs.png\" src=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/images\/twitter-langs.png\" hspace=\"5px\" vspace=\"5px\" \/><br \/>\nWhile the SemanticHacker team expressed their surprise at the language distribution, particularly the strong showing of Portuguese, we at ReadWriteWeb couldn&#8217;t help but wonder about the 10% labeled as &#8220;Unknown\/Misclassified.&#8221; Are these tweets simply so horribly misspelled that the language-guessing program they used on the data could not venture a guess? Or could it be that 10% of the Twitter populous is now writing in that contracted form of text message Twitter-speak that it could no longer be classified as a recognizable language? (If you&#8217;re looking for a good example, find a 12-year-old and exchange text messages or just give <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/sarahpalinusa\">Sarah Palin&#8217;s Twitter<\/a> a look.)<\/p>\n<h2>What We&#8217;re A-Twittering About<\/h2>\n<p>The folks at SemanticHacker then took a random sample of 1,000 English-language tweets and broke them down into eight categories.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"twitter-msg-types.png\" src=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/images\/twitter-msg-types.png\" hspace=\"5px\" vspace=\"5px\" \/><br \/>\nAccording to their findings, it seems that Twitter really is full of people talking about themselves. A full 57% of the sample falls into tweets about what a person is doing, or private conversations between individuals. <\/p>\n<p>That leaves just 43% for other purposes, but when we take a look at that, the findings seem to become even more dismal. If we take away another 8% for &#8220;Other Messages&#8221; and &#8220;Unknown,&#8221; and another 8% for &#8220;Spam&#8221; and &#8220;Advertising,&#8221; we&#8217;re left with a mere 27% of the information on Twitter having some sort of value.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it isn&#8217;t as bad as it looks, though. We&#8217;re willing to bet that if we wrote down everything we said in a day, the meaningful parts might not even reach the 27% mark. <\/p>\n<p>Oh, did I tell you about the tasty lentils I had for lunch today?<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/is_twitter_a_mental_vacuum.php#comments-open\">Discuss<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/F_woUGKLjeLb5VLtzcPmIshh3Cc\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/F_woUGKLjeLb5VLtzcPmIshh3Cc\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/F_woUGKLjeLb5VLtzcPmIshh3Cc\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/F_woUGKLjeLb5VLtzcPmIshh3Cc\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:FFnlKYwJmN0\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:Ij26kaj3iuU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:C2pbw5bZMiI\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?i=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?i=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?i=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?a=pv9636Pda4Y:SfIUH1goqH4:OqabYuBsmOY\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/readwriteweb\/~4\/pv9636Pda4Y\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we talk to our less technologically-inclined friends about Twitter, we often run across the objection that they really don&#8217;t care what so-and-so ate for lunch today or what movie they are seeing tonight. And every time, we try to extol all the other benefits of the world&#8217;s most popular microblogging service. But could we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}