Tag Archives: research

On Aug 12, Pear Analytics released a white paper discussing exactly what people are tweeting about.  For two weeks they randomly sampled the public timeline in 30 minute increments between the hours of 11 am and 5 pm CST. They categorized the tweets into six categories:

• News: What is happening in the world news, not TechCruch/Mashable type of news
• Spam: We all know what this one is.
• Self-Promotion: Corporate posts, latest blog posts – you get the idea
• Pointless Babble: Apparently these are the “I am eating a sandwich” or “I am going to the mall” type of tweets
• Conversational: @reply posts or questions and polls
• Pass Along Value: Retweets

Because I usually get a lot out of my tweets (sharing knowledge, conversation), I was surprised to see that Pointless Babble came in with 40.55% of the captured tweets, but Conversational came in close at 37.55%, and Pass-Along Value was third at 8.7% of the tweets captured. Also surprising was that Self-Promotion came in at 5.85%, Spam at 3.75% and News at 3.6%.

Today I tweeted out a link to a NY Times article on online learning stats. Where do “Sharing” tweets come in, where people are exchanging knowledge? Is that News?

The results went a little further, noting that 11:30 am and Mondays have a large retweet value. Maybe people are sharing all sorts of things they are finding in the news as they return to their desk and sharing them on Twitter, inspiring retweets? Conversational tweets tend to happen between 2 and 4 pm. This is about when I get antsy and want to focus on something else.  However, keep in mind that these tweets were all randomly sampled from the public timeline and Pear Analytics functions on CST. 11:30 am for them is different in for a lot of the rest of us.

In their white paper, Pear Analytics drew the conclusion that Conversational and Babble were so close that had they conducted a longer study, the two categories would constantly be trading out for first place. My money is on Conversational.

Oh, and guess where I found out about this study? Someone tweeted it.

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Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

by Brian Solis, originally posted in PR 2.0

Credit

As a follow up to my post, Extra Extra, Read All About It! Newspapers Respond to the Social Web,” new research emerges that documents the looming exit of print newspapers as a primary source of national and international news.

According to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, a new survey indicates that 40% of respondents claim the Internet as their primary source for national and international news, versus 24% in 2007. In comparison, 35%, up 1% from 2007, rely on newspapers and 70% count on television as their main source for news, down from 74% in 2007.

Perhaps the harbinger of things to come is embodied in the response from Americans under the age of 30. A staggering 59% indicated that they get most of their news from the Internet, up from 34% in 2007. In the group, television tied with the Internet at 59%, but for broadcast TV, it’s a steep decline from 68% in 2007. As Dan Farber of CNET points out, these figures add up to more 100 percent because people have the ability to offer multiple answers.

Clearly, printed newspapers as well as television are under tremendous pressure to reinvent themselves in the social economy. It’s not just about the socialized mechanisms and channels to source and broadcast news however, a successful metamorphosis requires the creation of an active and enlivened community supported by a profitable business model.

As I’ve stated previously, through social networks, blogs, and micro communities, consumers have access to information literally as it happens. Their peers become sources for news and information, reinforced by social frequency and reverberation. Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and other networks ARE emerging as trusted and oft referenced newsfeeds. And, they’re fueled by immediacy, brevity, and connectedness.

You can download the study as a PDF here.

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by Michelle Lentz

Today I found Quarkbase and it makes me uncomfortable.

I’ve never been one for numbers. When it comes to my blogs, I’ve never really cared about my traffic numbers, never installed Google Analytics, never paid a huge amount of attention to my number of subscribers. Why? Because I love to write, and that’s why I have blogs. I am afraid that getting caught up in the numbers will work against me. I’ll start writing to up the numbers, and not because I want to write about something.

So Quarkbase makes me uncomfortable. Type in a URL and it tells you just about everything you ever wanted to know about that web site. It finds biographical information on the owners, if available, as well as traffic, popularity, technical specifications, ranking, Twitter mentions, and more. If you’re trying to figure out whether to advertise on a web site, this is a great tool. I, for one, just wish they offered a tool to keep your web site private.

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.