What Kind of Tweets Do Consumers Like to Read?

Marketers I talk to are hungry for advice on how to optimize social media networks, and so I’m happy to share some intriguing Twitter data recently collected by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, MIT and Georgia Tech.

For this new study, CMU post-doctoral fellow Paul André, in conjunction with doctoral students Michael Bernstein (MIT) and Kurt Luther (GT) set up a website with the provocative name “Who Gives a Tweet?”  They invited people to anonymously evaluate Twitter messages in return for having their own tweets evaluated by others.  In all, more than 1,400 site visitors rated nearly 44,000 tweets over a two-and-a-half week period.

The results were revealing. Despite the astounding popularity of the Twitter platform, study participants liked only 36 percent of all the Tweets they reviewed. They disliked 25 percent of them, and nearly 40 percent of the Tweets evoked no opinion either way. If you add together those last two categories, you’re left with this sobering thought: A full 65 percent of posts on Twitter provide little or no value to people who read them.

So, what kind of Tweets did people like?

Volume of Arabic Tweets Grew 2,146 Percent in Past Year

It’s no surprise that English-language messages continue to comprise the largest percentage of 140-character posts sent daily on Twitter.

However, a recent study of all public tweets sent over a 16-month period did reveal one particularly interesting statistic: an astounding surge in Arabic messaging.

Sure, Twitter use in other languages showed growth during the same time-frame, but the number of Arabic tweets skyrocketed an eye-popping 2,146 percent!

Using analytic software that can distinguish among 61 different languages, including Greek, Russian, Hebrew and Chinese, the Semiocast study captured and analyzed 5.6 billion Twitter messages sent between July 1, 2010 and October 31, 2011.  To further underscore what makes the upswing in Arabic tweets so impressive, it helps to compare the statistic side-by-side with some of the other findings from the same study. Take a look:

Using Twitter as a Trendspotting Tool

Can sifting through the cacophony of tweets posted daily reveal meaningful information? Two researchers at Johns Hopkins decided to find out.

Mark Dredze and Michael J. Paul fed 2 billion public tweets posted between May 2009 and October 2010 into computers. Then, they used software to filter out the 1.5 million messages that referred to health matters.

By organizing health-related tweets into categories, Dredze and Paul were able to uncover interesting patterns about allergies, depression, cancer, obesity and other health problems.

In addition, they were able to observe which medications ill tweeters used and identify patterns of misuse (taking antibiotics for the flu, e.g.). They were even able to track some trends by time and place –such as when the allergy and flu seasons peaked in various parts of the country.

“When we started, I didn’t even know if people talked about allergies on Twitter,” said Paul. “But we found out that they do. And there was one thing I didn’t expect: The system found two different types of allergies: the type that causes sniffling and sneezing and the kind that causes skin rashes and hives.”

Does ‘No News Is Good News’ Apply on Twitter?

Does the old adage “No news is good news” apply to customer service-related Tweets?

The answer may be “yes” — at least for cable companies and other service providers.

According to the results of a recent survey on customer behavior, more than 1 million people per week view Tweets related to customer service experiences, and the vast majority of these Tweets are unfavorable.

That’s a lot of negative press.

The study, which included a statistical sampling of more than 2,000 Tweets, found that:

Study Explores the Role of Social Media in the College Classroom

What role, if any, does social media play in the college classroom?

Apparently, the answer depends on which particular social networking site is under consideration.

A new study conducted jointly by Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson found that college professors seem to be warming up to YouTube, while they remain considerably less enthusiastic about both Facebook and Twitter.

More specifically, nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of the 1,920 college professors surveyed said YouTube is “somewhat or very valuable for classroom use.” Only 15 percent thought the same for Facebook. Twitter came in as the channel with the least perceived value; a measly 9 percent feel Twitter is somewhat or very valuable in the classroom setting.

Interestingly, most of the faculty (80 percent) surveyed said they use social media for some aspect of a course they are teaching. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) use social media within their class sessions, and 30 percent post content for students to view outside of the classroom.