What People Are Twittering About

Over the last 6 months I have gone from “Twitter is a fad” to “Maybe there is something to this thing”.  As those who know me know, I don’t rush to the latest thing and I look cautiously to new technologies — I guess after doing this for 10 years through the bubble and bust I’ve gotten a bit cynical.  This new data from eMarketer (link) breaks down what people are using Twitter for and helps paint the picture of this strange new communication platform.

This profile of what is being Tweeted is a bit different than what I have experienced.  I would have thought the self-promotion would have been much higher as every blogger (including myself) and more and more businesses are blurbing out promotional tweets.  The catagory “Pointless Babble” leads me to believe that Twitter is being used as a real social platform by real people talking to real people.    Note that 37% of tweets are people talking to each other that are not just RTs (re-tweets).  RTs made up only 8.7% in the “Pass along” catagory.  From my experience there is a lot more self-promotion and a lot more Re-tweets.

I’ve recently participated in a Twitter event that we used as a promotional communication vehicle.  The results were very impressive as we gathered hundred’s of consumers together for several hours to talk about our products.  I found the Twitter audience to be very engaged and enthusiastic about directly communicating with the brand.  I’m still not sure how this thing will evolve but the data and my experience with this event is pushing me to believe that there is something to this Twitter thing.