Saturday, December 11, 2010

Does Twitter Retweets and Replies Infographic Support Gladwell's Argument?

Oct
26
2010


My colleagues recently passed around the infographic below from Gizmodo, In Twitter No One Can Hear You Scream, that questions whether people are really paying attention to what you say on Twitter. It shows that 71% of tweets get no reaction (retweets or replies) at all, while 23% get an @reply, and a tiny 6% actually get retweeted. Of that 6% sliver, 92% of the retweets happen in the first hour, suggesting that the window for you to be heard via your tweet is quite short.

This made me think about the article that Malcolm Gladwell wrote for the New Yorker, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted, published a few weeks ago, that elicited a firestorm of debate online. In short, he asserts that Twitter and Facebook activism doesn't have the power to create real social change due to the "weak ties" between "friends" and "followers" on these social networking sites. As you can imagine, this set bloggers, social media gurus, and especially the social media for social good-ers, a-blaze. The Dragonfly Effect blog, based on the book, which discusses how to use social media to drive social change, has a roundup of just some of the many reactions to Gladwell's article.

As I summarized the slactivism argument in my post, Has Do-Gooding Gone Mainstream, the internet and social media has made it so much easier for people to raise their virtual hands online to support a cause, but as the information depicted in the chart below questions, are those virtual hands really being noticed? Could Gladwell be right?

500x_retweets-replies-v2.jpg

Comments

I found this very interesting . . . or perhaps the coffee hadn't kicked in so my brain wasn't able to form it's own thoughts, but it does seem there's a LOT of noise on Twitter - trying to filter it all is becoming a time challenge for me.

Am I imagining this or has the latest trend on Twitter reporting and blocking spammers? I have seen some of the most hateful and idiotic items tagged to my account recently and I have no idea why or how. I just know I seem to be hitting "block and report as spam" a lot more than ever before.

Bottom line for me is that I find Twitter useful for various functions: conferences, sharing what I am learning at an event, following entertainment - you can always find me tweeting during Top Chef for instance - it's at these moments you further the experience and make connections. Twitter does have it's purpose and can be a useful tool but perhaps the questions we all have to remember to ask is: "Are people really paying attention to what you say on Twitter?" and "Has our ability to share been drowned out by all the noise?"

Gladwell is wrong, there is good if not GREAT stuff happening out in the cloud - we just have to have the patience and tools to find it.

Michael Sola heads up the IT program at NWF. he's a blogger, invited presenter and speaker - he also rarely has to show ID to walk into a pub. Follow him at http://twitter.com/michaelsola : his views and comments are his own

No comments: