PearAnalytics Twitter Study Isn’t Just Babble

Today’s trending topics on Twitter included more than celebrity gossip, world news or some pointless meme. “Twitter Analysis” and “Tweets Are Pointless” were #1 & #2 respectively. Ryan Kelly of PearAnalytics completed a study of a 2,000-tweet sample over a period of two weeks to determine the breakdown of tweets. On the heels of Twitter’s recent acclaim as a viable news source, Kelly decided to dissect Twitter’s content.

The chart above reflects the study’s findings: 40.55% of the tweets were considered “Pointless Babble”, 37.55% considered “Conversational”, and only 8.70% had “Pass-Along Value”.

Perhaps more interesting were the following stats:

- 11:30a and Monday’s have the most frequent tweets with Pass-Along Value. If you want something re-tweeted, try it at 11:30 in the morning, or try it on a Monday. Maybe folks are feeling generous then.

- Spam seemed pretty consistent all day, everyday, but luckily was second-to-last on frequency.

- News seemed heavier at 2:00p and on Tuesdays. Note that we did not collect any tweets during the Michael Jackson news, in order not to skew the results.

- Conversational tweets were high between 2:00 and 4:00p throughout the study, and heaviest on Tuesdays. Most people are busy on Monday catching up with work, so perhaps it takes until Tuesday to get into the swing of Twittering again.

You can keep your babble. Robert Scoble interviewed Ryan Kelly this evening, which included an offer to perform the same study on @Scobleizer‘s friends. The difference? Scoble recently dumped all of his tens of thousands of friends and then reinvested between 50-70 hours vetting his new list of friends to follow. The new list does include people he has met in person, but it’s probably safe to assume that Scoble’s list consists primarily of tweeters that initiate “conversation” and offer “pass-along value”.

Be sure to read the white paper on the PearAnalytics blog here and hear Robert Scoble’s exclusive interview with Ryan via FriendFeed.

Popularity: 12% [?]