(Image Source: The Study Itself)
Hey, everybody! Did you hear about that study that says 40% of Twitter usage is "pointless babble"?!
Of course you did! Because it was, like, a study, right, and studies are solid, reliable, important, serious stuff.
You can't just make up a bunch of shit, thwack it into a pretty graphics package, decide against using an editor or proofreader, call it a "study," and have news organizations around the globe regurgitate your "findings."
Or can you?
Turns out it all depends on which kind of "study" you're doing. Is it a real study (i.e., something that any one of my dear old research methods profs might recognize as a valid "study"), or is it a half-assed piece of self-promotion? (The link takes you straight to the much-quoted "white paper," in a new window.)
Yes, I went to the Pear Analytics web site to read their groundbreaking, newsworthy "white paper" about Twitter (so you don't have to). Apparently, all it takes to construct a "study" and have it picked up by the media is:
- A five-person business
- A baseless presupposition
- A malfunctioning oven in which to half-bake your ideas
- A couple of weeks
- An unearned dose of snark
- A distinct lack of facility with written English
Below are some of the more priceless highlights. All emphasis and italicized commentary is mine.
- Our initial hypothesis that we intended to prove was that Twitter was being used predominantly for self-promotion.
- Is Twitter meant to be a place to share silly comments and photos with your friends, or a great place to promote your company’s product or service? (Translation: Is Twitter a waste of time like, oh, say, communicating with people you like/love, or it a yet another piece of technology just waiting to be hijacked by entrepreneurs looking for yet another way to shove a bunch of crap you don't want down your throat?)
- Or is this why social media was created in the first place – so consumers could rant about the corporations of the world? (Translation:
PeopleConsumers should really just shut the fuck up, buy stuff, and like it.) - To conduct this study, we randomly sampled the public timeline Monday through Friday, every 30 minutes from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm for two weeks (10 days in total). Therefore, we took 200 samples from the timeline (in English) each day for a total sample data set of 2,000 points (or tweets). The tweets were then categorized into six areas. (Pear's highly scientific set of categories: News, Spam, Self-Promotion, Pointless Babble, Conversational, Pass-Along Value. But wait...there's a complication...)
- Now, if there were any tweets that could fit into more than one category (which was rare), if it started with “@”, we deemed it as conversational, even if it was a news item or self-promotion. (Yes, that sentence structure and punctuation is original. Don't ask me. I have no idea.)
- ...we thought the News category would have more weight than dead last, since this seems to be contrary to Twitter’s new position of being the premier source of news and events. (Translation: Twitter is so lame-O! Ha ha ha ha! LOLZ! News Fail! Twitter is like totally not what they say it is!)
Source: http://www.pearanalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Twitter-Study-August-2009.pdf
Everybody got that? Let's review. To do a newsworthy "study," just follow 5 easy steps:
Grab some stuff off the internet*
Put on your Pants of Pre-judgment
Shove the stuff you grabbed into a bunch of categories you just make up on the fly
Draw a sensational conclusion
Make headlines all over the globe.
Studies are EASY!
Inspired by this simple, straightforward formula, I decided to run my own analysis...of Pear Analytics' blogs!
Below is a snapshot of their own blog entry categorization scheme, but I had a hypothesis...
My hypothesis (that I intended to prove) was that their blog would primarily be about stuff they're trying to sell you. The data showed something different.
As you can clearly see from my cutting-edge data analysis, Pear Analytics' blog posts are actually NOT primarily about stuff they're trying to sell you. In actuality:
- 35% of the posts are a form of Online Marketing Buzzword Bingo
- Only 19% of the posts are about Stuff They're Trying To Sell You.
- Factor in 7% Stuff I Don't Care About, and...
- Fully 61% of their blogs are...dare I say it?
Pointless babble!
I totally shoulda gone into market research, y'all.
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Comments
By Stephen Fry
August 18th, 2009
The clue’s in the name of the service: Twitter. It’s not called Roar, Assert, Debate or Reason, it’s called Twitter. As in the chirruping of birds.
Apparently, according to Pears (the soapmakers presumably – certainly their “study” is froth and bubble) 40% of Twitter is “pointless babble”, (http://is.gd/2mKSg) which means of course that a full 60% of Twitter discourse is NOT pointless babble, which is disappointing. Very disappointing. I would have hoped 100% of Twitter was fully free of earnestness, usefulness and commercial intent.
@Stellaa: The people I follow are well worth following. I don't even dip my toe into the public timeline; I've got a well-pruned set of smart, witty folks whose tweets I treasure.
@cartouche: You should tweet more. Really. :-) And I love the squirrel's tweets.'
@staceyyoudin: Come back! Finish that thought!
@JonHenner: Glad you liked. Gah, seriously, where is the critical thinking among "news" editors?
Thanks
Rated
Funny stuff.
Now maybe he can afford to have somebody go through his web site and place all the periods and commas INSIDE the quotation marks. Gah.
* A five-person business
* A baseless presupposition
* A malfunctioning oven in which to half-bake your ideas
* A couple of weeks
* An unearned dose of snark
* A distinct lack of facility with written English
Wow, this is the exact model I've set up over here at Crimes Against Rock and Crux of the Biscuit! So can I start calling my posts "studies?" Can I get government funding for my "studies"?
This is very exciting!
Some people might call that Pointless Babble.
I call it...SOPHIE'S CHOICE!
Can't you just give me a bald faced, easily repeatible LIE!
As I don’t “tweet” (yet) I have little actual understanding of how it works. I am, however, working up the courage to change from a rotary phone to a digital one soon.
Your post incredibly funny (“An unearned dose of snark”) - even if technically over the head of someone who would put the “twit” in twitter if he tweeted.
Rated and appreciate
I sorta already new that thou.
Your analysis of this fatally flawed analysis is, well, er, analytically brilliant.
Twitter? Much ado about nothing. The newest mad fad. Hey, Good Buddies, anyone remember the 1970's national obsession with CB transmissions? Ten-four? Technology moves forward...
unfortunately, human idiocy and pack mentality do not.
As Scarlet O'Hara would say, "Twitter dee dee!" ;0)
--rated--
Remember thee, nay-sayers of pointless babble, thy Law d' Sturgeon: When asked why he wrote science fiction, since "90% of science fiction is crap," he opined “Ninety percent of everything is crap”.
My hero.
See Edward Tufte. Please
I champion this sort of expose. If every one of these bogus studies (including, "Wife Beatings Increase During Superbowl") were subjected to this sort of scrutiny, we might cut the shit and see a little more sunshine.
Bravo!
I have a pair of these but they have elastic in them -- is that self-defeating? (They're my fat pants of pre-judgment)
Is anyone else thinking "Palm-Pre-Raphaelite" about a certain TV advertising campaign?
No, Grandma, we don't want to kill you, that's just mean Republican talk.
"Chiefly British" phrases that deserve more currency here: twee, dog's breakfast, bugger all, shite, pear-shaped, knackered.
Boy asks Mr. Bad Owl: How many puffs does it take to get to the tar and nicotine-stained butt of a Marlboro cigarette?
Liberal malcontent who moves to Europe: Traitor. Conservative malcontent who brings a gun to a Presidential speech: Patriot. Got it.
You already know this, of course, being my only follower. (But how cool is that, come to think of it?)