Study indicates just one in three tweets are worth reading
Twitter users overwhelmed by hundreds of spam tweets can now quantify the problem thanks to an academic study of the platform conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Georgia Tech.
The team published a website, ‘who gives a tweet?’ that acted as a portal for people to anonymously rate the perceived quality of the tweets of those they follow in return for results feedback.
In total some 43,738 tweets were rated from over 2,000 unique accounts with 36% rated positively, 25% rated negatively and a further 39% as neutral.
Michael Bernstein, a doctoral student at MIT, explained: “A well-received tweet is not all that common. A significant amount of content is considered not worth reading, for a variety of reasons.”
These include tweets that comprise part of a semi-private conversation, old links or simply relate the current mood or activity of the tweeter.
Positive tweets included sharing of breaking news, self-promotion, opinions and engaging with followers by asking questions.