Re: Report: Most Twitter Tweets 'Pointless Babble'

[security curmudgeon <jericho () attrition org>]

Months ago, I was active in a thread on Funsec saying the exact same 
thing. This was before I joined twitter and started reading/posting.

Gadi made a point that "have you used it?", I believe I admitted I hadn't 
and was open to ideas that it wasn't pure babble.

Months later, I am active on a daily basis on twitter. Half of what I post 
is 'babble', but designed to amuse/annoy/disgust people. Half of what I 
post is more serious about attrition, OSVDB, DatalossDB or our industry. 
That includes me pressing buttons of certain people (PCI wonks, CISSPs, 
etc).

Now that I have 'used it', I agree that most of Twitter is pointless 
babble. The part that most people writing about it seem to miss, is that 
Twitter only has value and power if you use a third-party client and 
third-party Twitter-related services. Using keyword filters, managing who 
you follow so as not to get burdened with too many tweets that cause you 
to become numb, etc.

Even then, you still have to deal with a world of babble, spam followers, 
Twitter ignorance (downtime, security 101 failures, general incompetance).

Bottom line: Twitter can have value, but it certainly isn't in Twitter 
itself. "twitter.com" as you see now, is a fucking joke, middle school 
level coding and software maturity at best. Use a third-party client, 
figure out who's worth following, figure out keywords that benefit your 
profession or hobbies.. then you start to find real value.

Even then, that value gets challenged daily. Earlier today I posted about 
a) four hour erection without viagra, and if i should still go to hospital
b) RSA trying to claim trademark infringement to silence a researcher

Guess which got more replies and RTs?

- security curmudgeon

p.s. it was 50/50


On Fri, 14 Aug 2009, Juha-Matti Laurio wrote:

: "As if one were needed, a study revealed that most tweets on Twitter are considered "pointless babble."
: The study, conducted by Pear Analytics, explored a range of reasons users tweet on microblogging site Twitter.
: However, despite Twitter's recent news focus, the study found that the majority of tweets fell into the usage 
category of "Pointless Babble."
: Other reasons included conversational, pass-along value, spam, news and self-promotion.
: 
: "Mostly many people still perceive Twitter as just mindless babble of people telling you what they are doing 
minute-by-minute;
: as if you care they are eating a sandwich at the moment," said Ryan Kelly, a study researcher, in a blog post. "
: 
: And later
: 
: "In addition, researchers said they originally hypothesized that Twitter would be primarily used for self-promotional 
purposes 
: -- tweets that are trying to push a product, service or have a "Twitter only" offer. 
: However, self-promotion comprised about 5.85 percent of the total tweets.
: 
: Spam tweets were consistent throughout the day, but came in second to last in frequency. News came in last."
: --clip--
: 
: http://www.crn.com/security/219300175;jsessionid=DWC0K2ZU2VEE1QE1GHRSKHWATMY32JVN
:  
: Juha-Matti
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