Twitter Psychological Research: Who Tweets, How Much, What They Say and Why

http://ow.ly/6KS62

An article by Dava Castillo posted on allvoices.com website.

This article discusses some research and analysis regarding patters of use on Twitter, and some psychological insight into what is tweeted and why.

The article provides the following interesting statistics regarding the categories of tweets:

• Pointless babble: 41%
• Conversational: 38%
• Pass-along value: 9%
• Self-promotion: 6%
• Spam: 4%
• News: 4%

In addition, the article states that as of February, 2011 there are 200 Million users on Twitter.  The article also states, "A 2009 Pew Research found there are 190 million Twitter users around the world producing 65 million tweets each day. 19% of US internet users Tweet or use a similar service to share updates about themselves—double the figure from the previous year." A link to the Pew Research survey is provided in the article. 

Further information regarding the average ages of social media users is provided as follows, "The average age of Tweeter is 31

The average (median) age for a Twitter user is 31, older than the median MySpace user who is 26, but younger than Facebook which is now 33. LinkedIn has the oldest users with the median being 39. Predictably the strongest growth in Twitter use is amongst those aged 18-24."

Additional surveys and studies are referenced in the article, including links to the sources.  One such study found as follows, "Heil & Piskorski report that 10% percent of Twitter users contribute 90% percent of the tweets. Most of the Twitter users are following celebrities because of the “halo effect.”"

In addition, another study found, "After examining 350 messages collected from Twitter, Naaman (2010) found two different types of user:

• Informers: 20% shared information and replied to other users
• Meformers: 80% mostly sent out information about themselves."