That title may have left you wondering where the news is, as surely everyone knows Twitter is made up of mostly pointless babble and conversation. But no, that’s not the case. In fact, many assume Twitter has grown out of that kind of use and has evolved into something more – an assumption proved incorrect by a new study.

Twitter means different things to different people. Some use it as a micro-blogging service, updating their friends with 140-character tweets, others use it to promote themselves and their business, while others still use it as a social network to find and make new friends. And then there’s its use as a portal for breaking news, with citizen journalists from around the world being able to cut through the old media guard and deliver updates straight to the people.

It’s this use which is being talked up of late by both Twitter and its fans. Ashton Kutcher even explained why he thinks Twitter “has and will forever change media.” But it seems the message hasn’t got through to the bread-and-butter users of the site, with most using it for very different reasons.

According to CNET, a new study from Pear Analytics looked at what type of content Twitter was used for. The company sampled tweets from the public timeline every 30 minutes throughout last week. A sample data set of 2,000 tweets was then used to compile the results of the study.

A huge 40.5 percent of tweets were found to be made up of “pointless babble.” While a further 37.5 percent of tweets were “conversational.” Tweets that had “pass-along value” numbered 8.7 percent, while tweets that can be classified as “self-promotion” came in at 5.8 percent. Then came “spam” on 3.7 percent and “news” on 3.6 percent.

That means a huge majority of posts on Twitter are simply rambling messages to no one in particular. Tweets that classify as news coming last suggests that while Twitter does indeed have that sort of message as part of its make-up, it is by no means the main use for most people. In fact, it’s rather worrying that spam accounts for a higher percentage of tweets than news does.

That’s a situation that Twitter needs to address, by both cutting down the levels of spam and encouraging news tweets, if it’s to truly challenge or even change the media. And there’s definitely a question mark left hanging as to whether it can achieve that.

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Entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 12:35 am under Amusing, Internet, Social Media, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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