Saturday, March 3, 2012

Social Media Datum 2

I've been sitting on this bit of information as well as the one I posted earlier; they're starting to back up, so I'll feed them to you slowly in hope they don't become overwhelming or boring.

I ran across some more info porn regarding twitter posts--tweets.  Although I've had a twitter account for some time, I hardly ever use it since I can't figure out what I feel is tweet-able.  According to a recent study that was posted on the Society Pages, my hesitation is well founded.  Kurt Luther, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate, compiled thousands of ratings of tweets and suggests that the mundane, "guess what I just ate" tweets aren't worth reading, while we crave meaningful questions and brief comments with little mark-up.

His findings don't seem too surprising to me, but I seem to notice most of the tweets from my subscription list fill the former category.  Is this just like us not being able to sit with an uncomfortable silence and instead choose to fill the air with navel gazing and pointless blather? (Oh, believe me, I know I'm guilty.)  I think what we're really starting to dig into in our class is creating content that shifts thoughts, behavior, culture.  This I like; this is something that I know I can share with my friends and subscribers easily and will probably lead them to repost or rethink and share with their friends.

Oh yeah: if you're really interested in his study, there is a link to the full paper he published with his colleagues.

2 comments:

  1. ^^^ Advertising spam!! Ahhh!

    (Another example of how our content is watered down)

    ReplyDelete
  2. ...I feel the sanctity of our discussion has been violated by special (and selfish) interests.

    No class, Alexander.
    Ugh.

    ReplyDelete