Nobody Gives a Hoot About Your Tweet: Study Doesn’t Bode Well For Twitter’s Future

A new study of 1.2 billion tweets supports what many of us have thought for a long time: Chronic misuse of Twitter may have dire consequences for its long-term popularity and survival…

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Social media analysts Sysomos took it upon themselves to pour over 1.2 billion tweets over a two month period, and here’s what they found:

Most tweets = spam.

At least that’s our interpretation after not only using the application, but looking at the results of Sysomos’ study.

Sysomos found that 71% of all tweets get no reply whatsoever.

Further, just 6% get re-tweeted, and 23% get a reply. And of the 23% that get a reply, 85% of those get just one reply.

The lack of replies and re-tweets supports what a lot of us have been sensing on an anecdotal level — most of the stuff is just a 140-character version of junk mail. And when the receiver continuously fails to get takeaway from the communication, he or she will eventually tune out the source.

Naturally, I’m looking at Twitter as a potential serious communication tool for business or social good.

But the rest of the world really likes it for its potential to report on celebrity and gossip. Last week’s #2 Twitter topic? Justin Bieber tweeting about liking maple syrup. I’m not making that up.

And frankly, that’s okay. It’s fun, and kids have been driving the Twitter boat since the beginning.

But there is a class of elites who truly believe Twitter is a global game-changer in terms of either business, advertising, or social good (right down to those who continue to incorrectly credit Twitter with revolutionary roles in protest movements in Iran, for example).

Twitter could be those things. But it more likely Twitter won’t be those things due to the chronic misuse of the technology to tweet the useless. And when tweets lack a deliverable — lack a takeaway — they become nothing more than clutter in an increasingly cluttered world.

The tune out is starting.

Malcolm Gladwell, who I think we all agree is a pretty good thinker, called bullshit on social media in a recent New Yorker piece — essentially equating social media as a change agent with slactivism. He may or may not be correct, but skeptics are raising their eyebrows at the crowd that has come to fetishize social media.

The way we see it, the problem is actually pretty simple: too many self-absorbed people tweeting too much junk.

My wife points to the Facebook postings of a Wall Street wife who posts constantly about her spa vacations and private yoga classes in a time when the rest of the neighborhood is trying to figure out how they’re gonna hit the mortgage payment. She’s unaware, but her lack of understanding of the audience is resulting in Facebook posts that are, in turn, eliciting derisive scuttlebutt about her.

Twitter is headed in that direction.

Even the gurus of Twitter are confused about who their audience is, and what they’re looking for.

Jared Cohen, a former State Department employee, rode Iran’s Twitter Revolution (now debunked) to a top job at Google.

Cohen’s 303,000+ followers are treated to a lot of useful content, such as a re-tweet from Mike Bloomberg:

Since 1990 cities with the largest increase in immigrant workers, like #NYC, have had the fastest economic growth http://bit.ly/bHSiS1

But even with Cohen the wheels come off, with sometimes a less than impressive ratio of useless to useful tweets– focused on name-dropping or just plain “all about me” communiques such as:

En route to Sarasota, last time I was there was to see Michael Jordan play baseball in the mid-90s

and

Goodbye Sarasota, hello Houston

If Twitter is to succeed in its potential as a serious communication technology, those who use it will need to focus much more on the audience, and much less on themselves. A rare, but strong deliverable via Twitter is infinitely better than a constant stream of whatever.

It’s as simple as the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Feed us garbage one too many times and we won’t be around to listen when it really matters.

-Paul Marszalek