By Suzanne Panoplos
Despite the increasing popularity of social media outlets like twitter, there are still a fair amount of people that have resisted getting on the bandwagon. When Pear Analytics released its twitter study indicating that over 40 percent of Twitter tweets are “pointless babble”, friends, colleagues and even my own husband and others latched on to these results as vindication for their refusal to get on board. “I am just not that interested in finding out what someone had for lunch that day,” insists my husband.
And sure enough, when I conducted my own random search on twitter of the subjects “eat”, “drink” and “sleep”, there was quite a bit of people tweeting on these subjects – hundreds in fact. Yes, many of these tweets were uninteresting and did involve a laundry list of what someone had for lunch while others were just downright disturbing: “Please help me before I drink human blood.” Okay let’s just chalk that one up to a fanatical Twilight follower.
For me, twitter has been an invaluable outlet for me understanding the media and following trends for clients. It also gives me valuable insight into what reporters and analysts are thinking and writing about: “@nealweinberg: Looking for enterprise data center case studies.” I believe it can give us a little bit more insight into the people we want to communicate with and yes, that includes what they are doing in their personal lives.
Twitter has become my own personal news source. I was on twitter when I found out Michael Jackson died and when Captain “Sully” Sullenberger expertly guided an airplane into the Hudson. Twitter is where I find out about H1N1 outbreaks and vaccines and more information on net neutrality, healthcare reform and the situation in Iran.
Pointless babble or real-time news? With Neilsen reporting that Twitter has grown 1,382% year-over-year, the impact of this microblog is undeniable. As with most things, people will have to decide for themselves whether or not to engage. But for those that do decide to tweet, I think what is true for twitter is what is true for most things in life – you get what you give.
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