As the popularity of Twitter has skyrocketed, I've wondered how many businesses feel that it's a much less effective communications tool than it used to be since millions use it as bulletin board to post inane thoughts.
Based on an article in today's SF Gate, this problem with Twitter might be bigger than I thought. A recently released Pear Analytics study confirms that the biggest single segment of tweets is "pointless babble."
I find that I'm looking much less at my Twitter feed because
so many messages are either inane ("I just ate a burrito") or
self-promotional ("check out this new product I'm offering"). In the eight months I've been active on Twitter, it seems like the quantity of
tweets has grown much more rapidly than their quality.
While some celebrate Twitter as more effective communications tool than email, I have my doubts. Most good email systems have robust spam filters which work quite. While I've heard some say good things about a third-party application for Twitter called Philtro that can weed out "babble" (please share your comments about Philtro in the comments section of this post), the folks at Twitter need to come up with a filtering system quickly or risk being replaced by communications tools that better separate the wheat from the chaff.
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