News Flash – People Tweet about Pointless Babble

A rush of emails flew around the office this morning about Emarketer’s post claiming 40% of Tweets are babble. Not just babble but “pointless babble”.  At the time I wondered what babble with a point might look like. But let’s get past that mindblock.

I find it really interesting. The “pointless babble” is just random stuff that people shout out in the course of their daily life. An SEO expert might provide heaps of useful insight, flagging up useful links and helping their Twitter community with stucks and problems. Yet they may also shout out that their cat was just sick over their best handmade organic Afghan rug. Babble ? Or an opportunity for creating social connection. Random Joe might reply “huh that sucks, my cat did that yesterday too”. Following that, they might find they have a lot in common and another online human touch point is created. It all depends if you find people interesting and quirky, or if you’re just looking to “take” from the Twitter/social media experience. If the Internet is 80% crap and 20% remarkable insight and amazing global/local/micro connectivity, do we dismiss it automatically? No, so why all the venting about Twitter? Because it’s new and people haven’t figured out what to do with it yet. But we all know that one man’s garbage is another man’s gold. Or, one man’s babble is another man’s (social) opportunity.

Social media is very much a give-and-take environment, like karma. Give, share, help, and (hope to) receive. “In Twitter we trust”.

Maybe the “takers” aren’t very well suited to social; they just want to get stuff of value to them, or they plainly just don’t get it ? Ever tried explaining social to someone? It’s hard. “Yes, you have to offer something of value and you need to connect to, or build a community. Yes, you have to invest time and effort in it. No, there is no immediate return”. It’s a hard sell to the uninitiated laggard.

Twitter: glass half full, or glass half empty?