Of 1.2 Billion Twitter Posts, 71% Are Ignored 192
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.
aww... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:aww... (Score:5, Insightful)
just because something didn't get an answer, doesn't mean it was "ignored"..
Re:aww... (Score:4, Informative)
As this comment will probably be.
Re:aww... (Score:4, Interesting)
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. :-)
Re:aww... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its usually a good indication that they are ignored or virtually ignored.
So the social rule on twitter is to always acknowledge receipt of any post? When someone says "I'm in section 2A of the stadium", you're supposed to tweet back "ack'd" instead of going to talk with them in person? If a twitterer gets any responses at all, ever, then that's a good indication that all of their stuff is being read by someone, but only a few things merit a response.
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RT @Culture20 good point #ack
Otherwise the acknowledgment isn't acknowledged, and thus ignored. Now somebody has to ack me, otherwise ... etc.
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I don't really use twitter, but doesn't the format itself make conversations that are "more than three levels deep" almost impossible because you can't preserve the context? Twitter itself knows how many times each tweet was accessed for display, which is probably proportional to the number of times it's been read. Those statistics would be more informative.
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Hi Culture20, I did not get your previous message. I thought my lack of reply would let you know so you could re-send it. You didn't. I guess you really don't care about our friendship. I guess that means I don't care any more either, so I'm going to un-slashdot you. Have a nice life.
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So then, anywhere from 0 to 71% of tweets are ignored?
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Every day we pay attention to traffic signals, but monitoring if we tell the stop signs that we see them isn't the best way to know if we're paying attention to stop signs.
Re:aww... (Score:5, Funny)
At some point, a conversation has to end. "meet me at the library", "ok, see you there", "ok, got your reply see you there too", "I already said that", "acknowledged", "shut up already", "shutting up now", "nm", "here's a pic of my cat"
Re:aww... (Score:5, Funny)
So, then tweets are like prayers?:
Re:aww... (Score:4, Funny)
So, then tweets are like prayers?
Not in the least. We will play Duke Nukem Forever.
Re:aww... (Score:4, Funny)
Not exactly. The tweets at least have a chance of getting read..
Re:aww... (Score:5, Informative)
The true stats are worse ... as I'll explain below:
I'm not. "Social marketers" buy twitter accounts in bulk - ten cents apiece.
Many of the "responses" are from one "bought" account to another to try to generate "buzz" - the true level is probably in the single digits.
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Really? They could have mine for a nickel.
For those in doubt (Score:2)
Of course, failbook is an even bigger mess [bulkfans.com] Buy 5,000 facebook fans for $30, 150,000 fans for $160 (ten for a penny). And that's about what the average facebook account really is worth, if you believe that the market sets the price.
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just because something didn't get an answer, doesn't mean it was "ignored"..
Does recent tech provide a way to count farts?
In other news, Windows Phone 7 today...
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As sad as it is, recent tech does do something like this. Just check out this chair (I think it was discussed on slashdot, too).
http://gizmodo.com/5211135/man-builds-chair-that-tweets-his-farts-single+handedly-justifies-twitters-existence [gizmodo.com]
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just because something didn't get an answer, doesn't mean it was "ignored"..
true, just as something getting a response doesn't mean it was in any way an important, interesting, or even cogent thought.
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Indeed - if somebody posted something on twitter, and 100 people responded to it, 99% of the tweets involved were "ignored" unless somebody responded to each of those 100 tweets, and so on.
I imagine the only way to get the ratio anywhere near 50% would be to write a worm that does meaningless replies to any tweets it finds (including its own and its cousins') and get it to propagate.
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"No response whatsoever" is completely different to "no verbal response". People may still be reacting without saying anything. It's like the "like" button on Facebook. People can like something but not actually say anything. I don't use twitter but I'd imagine it's different from a retweet. You might "like" when someone mentions that they just had your favourite breakfast cereal for breakfast, but you'd hardly tell all your friends that one of your friends just had your favourite breakfast cereal for break
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I know the definition of ignore, and I stand by my post..
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There are a lot of others, too. I follow quite a few software authors to hear about problems they've found or new releases. "Found a glitch when posting to Reddit" or "Apple just approved version 2.4.1!" don't deserve replies.
I never retweet famous people or software authors. I figure that if you wanted to hear Conan O'Brien's latest quip, you'd follow him. If you don't own a copy of OmniFocus, then you won't care about a new version. While I don't ignore those tweets, I have no incentive to pass them along
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I'm not quite that restrictive. If a friend says something particularly interesting, I'll sometimes retweet that on the chance that some of my followers might also like it. After all, that sort of thing is how I found most of the people I follow on Twitter.
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But yes they're pretty much all total garbage.
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Okay poop is coming out
_____________________________
Alright, poop time.
_____________________________
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Not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really see why this is a particularly surprising statistic. So most Tweets are only read by users... Most Slashdot stories I don't reply to and only read, does that mean that Slashdot is somehow limited or has a large number of dead stories? Of course not, it's just that most people do lots more reading than writing.
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Most Slashdot stories I don't reply to and only read, does that mean that Slashdot is somehow limited or has a large number of dead stories?
No it doesn't, but the fact that you (indeed, we) are replying, doesn't mean the opposite either.
Re:Not surprised (Score:5, Funny)
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That dependes: are the responses also counted amongst "twitter posts"? Because if they are, and every one was answered just once, then Twitter would go on forever with a single post and its reply and its reply's reply and so on.
Most posts must go unreplied, otherwise you get a runaway chain reaction.
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Unless a tweet is in your timeline, there is an effort involved in reading it. Therefore the number that are ignored is measurable. But what about all the other stuff th
Not the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are we assuming that tweets are intended to net a response?
Exactly - the thing I like about Twitter is that information can be disseminated passively by, for example, social and sports clubs but in a way that doesn't continually bombard email accounts with endless drivel. I can pop onto twitter and quickly skim to see what is what and not have to delete every damn message, as I do with with spam. So my response to twitter posts can be to go do something in the real world. Outside. A Tweet might even take me somewhere where there's no connectivity at all! So measuring value by retweets is franklly bonkers.
Re:Not the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not the point (Score:4, Interesting)
case in point
Re:Not the point (Score:4, Informative)
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It's a great way of keeping up with friends who you don't see very often due to being in geographical locations. A friend of mine just tweeted that he is going to LA for a week (he lives in the UK). I will know not to drop by his house whilst he is away. It didn't demand a response but it helps me know what is going on.
Of course, grammar leaves a lot to be desired such as the tweet "At doctor who live at wembley" by the same friend who lives close by. I assumed he was at a doctors surgery and wondered
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... and it also told me (and anyone else who cared to know) that he won't be home, and that we should be dropping by to help ourselves.
Doing shit like that is just not smart. If it isn't outright dangerous, it's usually pointless. He could have just called you, or sent you an email, or hell - even posted something to some other social network that isn't quite as open.
Re:Not the point (Score:5, Funny)
I've been meaning to ask my mother-in-law that very question for years now.
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There's a whole community around the url shortening in twitter (bit.ly), and every click on that link is counted. so maybe X people read a tweet AND followed the link in it (possibly filling out a form or buying crap there), but if no one writes a reply it still counts as ignored.
Seems low (Score:5, Insightful)
In my case, 100% are ignored.
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Wow! (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this really news? I guess the precise number counts as news; I would have placed it somewhere closer to 99%.
Dumb title (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dumb title (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Relatedly, just because somebody replies to the tweet doesn't mean people are reading it.
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And just because somebody doesn't reply to the reply to the reply to the original message doesn't mean that they weren't annoyed by having to read all the "me toos..." It should be obvious that in a tree formed of tweets that it is going to be likely that there will be more leaf nodes than internal nodes unless you have really long branches.
'Not replied to' != 'ignored' (Score:5, Insightful)
You might as well say that X% of newspaper articles are 'ignored' because they don't generate letters to the Editor about them.
I am NOT expressing any opinion on the subjective usefulness of the average tweet, however.
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You might as well say that X% of newspaper articles are 'ignored' because they don't generate letters to the Editor about them.
I am NOT expressing any opinion on the subjective usefulness of the average tweet, however.
Interestingly, compared to the well composed letters to the editor, when the newspapers I read opened up online comments, I realized how stupid a lot of the readership is.
Character limit (Score:5, Funny)
The problem is that it's very difficult to fit what you want to say into 140 characters. Unless you're into text speak, you may find that y
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RT @rik: The problem is that it's very difficult to fit what you want to say into 140 characters. Unless you're into text speak, you may fi
Simple, just use perfect compression recursively! (Score:4, Funny)
(Which is what you inevitably end up with after applying perfect compression that removes at least one bit with each pass).
It can furthermore be stated that for Tweets this achieves near lossless compression.
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Re:Simple, just use perfect compression recursivel (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually, a perfect compression algorithm would have the entropy of its input as the lower bound: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) [wikipedia.org]
Well, we've started to go down this road, so why not go all the way? Measuring the entropy of its input depends on the probabilistic model used. For instance, a compression algorithm dedicated to only describing the text of the Bible could do so with 1 bit. Either it's the Bible or nothing. Commonly used models for entropy calculations put the English language at 1.5 bits per character, so we've seemingly broken the above lower bound.
What you really should measure it in is Kolmogorov complexity [wikipedia.org], which is ro
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1
I decompressed your message, but it appears to be perfectly encrypted as well.
Odd definition of the word "ignored" (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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I don't use Twitter as any kind of social network, but when I tweet
I don't use words or any kind of typing machine.
So what! (Score:2)
You should see how many postings on Slashdot get ignored.
There is not enough hours in the day to read everything you might like.
They don't seem to understand the purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They don't seem to understand the purpose (Score:5, Funny)
Back in the dinosaur age if something happened to you(passed a test got herpes whatever) you would actually have to phone/write several people saying the exact same thing. You weren't always looking for a response but just wanted to share the news. Thats what twitter is for.
No wonder I can't figure this twitter thing out. I'm out of school and don't have herpes.
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No wonder I can't figure this twitter thing out. I'm out of school and don't have herpes.
The whole life is a constant test.
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Whatever
Surprised the percentage is that LOW (Score:4, Interesting)
Somehow (Score:2)
That's a lot more effective than I thought.
purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
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With the sheer amount of all the pointless stuff there I imagine it's really hard to find those few meaningful tweets unless you know exactly what you're trying to find.
Welcome to the internet.
Have to say... (Score:2, Funny)
Since when has twitter ever been primarily about being relevant? It's always been about being real-ish, and for most people, reality is not retweet or reply worthy.
If only computers could classify "inane crap"... (Score:2)
While the headline says that 71% are "ignored", TFA does at least say that they get "no reaction" (i.e. no reply or retweet). TBH, that's probably reasonable from my experience - I follow several announcement feeds but don't retweet them most of the time because they're specific to my interests and anyone else who is also interested can follow it themselves.
What I do wonder, though, is what proportion of those multi-level responses (replies to replies) and replies in general are from the unwashed masses wit
Re:If only computers could classify "inane crap" (Score:2)
If only computers could classify "interesting technical pointers, snippets and announcements" versus "inane drivel about bodily functions or other personal activity"
if you're prepared to accept a 99% level of confidence, the answer is yes, computers can classify inane crap. The simple way to do this is to realise that something over 99% of all internet traffic is inane crap. Therefore saying "all of it" satisfies the 99% requirement (and probably includes this post, too).
Approaching 80-20 (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot Posts (Score:2, Interesting)
tweet tweet (Score:2)
Buzzwords (Score:2)
This is just a matter of time and you will all realize that buzzwords are still buzzwords. No matter is it 2000 or 2010, some things are just plain stupid and will disappear.
First rule of effective communication (Score:2)
Well, good! If you have nothing to say, say nothing.
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Well, good! If you have nothing to say, say nothing.
...
They're not supposed to be answered. (Score:3, Interesting)
Innovation vs. the best fit. (Score:2)
It is my belief that this development speaks to the niche that twitter can best fit rather than any flaw in the underlying tool itself. For example, if I have a Nook or Ipad as my book reader, I can do a lot of different things with it and probably will buy fewer paper books to read since I can just read e-books. However, if I want to take something with me to the beach to read (because I usually run there or bike) I will probably take a paperback with me to read rather than my e-reader because the paperbac
Sounds like... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm eating breakfast (Score:2)
Doesn't surprise me (Score:2)
This doesn't surprise me (and I seem to be in the minority here who actually finds Twitter useful). I wonder how many Slashdot comments get replied to. Think about it. Suppose you have 10 comments to an article and 5 of those get 1 reply each. You now have 15 comments with only 5 being replied to, or 66% being "ignored". Add a few more second level comments, some third level comments, some "moderated to -1" comments, some jokes which elicit a "+5 Funny" but no replies, etc and you could easily have ove
All social networks? (Score:2)
I can't imagine it's any different on any other social networking site. Even Slashdot has a large percentage of unresponded-to posts.
Clickthrough rate? (Score:2)
.
any reply ? (Score:2)
I am astounded by the claim that nearly three out of ten tweets actually do get any response.
lol
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Until proven otherwise I’m assuming that’s entirely due to the recent viral self-replicating tweet.
71% ignored? (Score:2)
Qualify "Response" (Score:2)
What if I click on a link? What if I pass that link on to my facebook friends? What If I comment on the forum that link points to and that comment gets re-tweeted. I doubt any of these actions have made the stats. So, the stats might be interesting, but I venture that the name of the stat is mislabled. It should be titled: "Number of tweets that are replied to or retweeted". Nothing more.
A better methodology (Score:2)
Rather than looking at the number of replies & retweets, a much better methodology is to look at the number of clicks that a link posted inside a tweet gets.
When I post a link (using my YOURLS [yourls.org] powered shortener) Approximately 5% of my 600 followers will click the link. Retweets and responses are much more rare than clicks. If anybody clicks the link, the tweet was not ignored, but according to this study they were.
Regularly I'll tweet something, then a day or two later, I'll have somebody ask me IRL
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Upon actually reading TFA, it's clear that the submitter added the conclusions about "no reaction" or being "ignored". The study itself doesn't mention the word "ignored", it's strictly a study of rates of replies and retweets.
Shame on you submitter....
Fast life of an old fart (Score:2)
OK, a one liner then. I hate wasting my time on quick, shallow communication.
Why would I contemplate chit chat? I'm a geek and I like knowing exactly how people and stuff work. I won't invest time in witnessing symptoms or occasional exclamations.
I'm surprised 29% of the messages are actually read. Must be the indexing bots. And even those contraptions don't really care.
Re:Summary says it all (Score:4, Insightful)
and how many times does the response go off channel??
ie farm1785: SVR Gandalf ON FIRE
farm1785: HLN ACTIVE PWR Discon rack 45
[45 tweets from service monitors]
none of these would be responded to by Twitter
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Welcome to slashdot!