2009 September » Mental Pluff Mud

STUDY: 80% of Twitter Users Are All About Me

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Sep 292009

Rutgers University Professors Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase set out to analyze the content and characteristics of social media activity. They dubbed communications systems like Facebook and Twitter, “social awareness streams,” and then took to examining user behavior.

After dissecting over 3,000 tweets from more than 350 Twitter (

) users’ status updates the professors concluded that 80% of users are “meformers,” or “Me Now” status updaters.

Meformers are “people who use the platform to post updates on their everyday activities, social lives, feelings, thoughts, and emotions.” The rest (20%) are informers who use the channels to share informational updates like links news articles.

The research and methodology was carefully documented (see below), and in their analysis the professors distinguished 9 different types of tweets. Categories include information sharing, self promotion, opinions and complaints, statements and random thoughts, me now, question to followers, presence maintenance, self-referential anecdotes, and anecdotes about others. In the coding part of the process, researchers were able to attribute tweets to multiple categories. They also ensured that tweets were independently analyzed by two different parties to eliminate errors.

Based on the categories and complex cluster analysis, the professors were able to lump Twitterers into one of two categories: meformers or informers. The former makes up 80% of the user base, while the latter a meager 20%. Interesting enough, though, the study also showed that the informers have significantly more friends and followers than their meformer counterparts. The median informer has 131 friends and 112 followers, while the media meformer has just 61 friends 43 followers.

Although not portraying the average Twitterer in a glamorous the light, the research seems to line up with other surveys, studies, and reports on the micro medium. It’s even more unflattering then the San Diego State research that showed young people believe social media is for narcissists. It doesn’t go so far as to say we tweet pointless babble, but it did find that 41% of all messages fall in the “Me now” category, which does correspond with the earlier study that claimed 40% of all tweets are pointless babble.

You can read the entire report below, but here are a few additional interesting findings from the Twitter research:

- Informers have a higher proportion of mentions of other users in their messages (that is they @reply to more Twitterers)
– 25% of messages come from mobile phones
– 51% of mobile-posted messages are “me now” messages, compared to the 37% of “me now” messages posted from non-mobile applications

Twitter Study

Image from verymissberry on Flickr (

)

via mashable.com

I am mostly an “informer” sort on Twitter [and Facebook] according to what this article says. Not surprising… based on Gladwell’s Tipping Point I am a “Maven” type.

It’s also not surprising since I use Twitter [and Facebook] to get up to date and up to speed about what’s going on in the wider world, and then spread outward that which I find of some interest.

I love the Social Media scene: Twitter, Facebook, blogging, forums. No surprises there either… I’m an Information Addict.

Posted via web from SophiaZoe

Villages ‘wiped out’ by tsunami after Samoa quake: report – Yahoo! News

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Sep 292009

APIA (AFP) – A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 struck off the South Pacific island nation of Samoa on Tuesday, wiping out villages and killing 19 people in the region, reports said.

At least 14 people were reported to have died in American Samoa, and five in Samoa as enormous waves battered the island states, with one witness saying the wall of water had been up to 30 feet (nine metres) high.

[O]ne local journalist told AFP entire villages had been wiped out in Samoa on the worst-hit south and southwest coasts in an area where thousands of people live. The Samoan capital of Apia was evacuated as authorities scrambled to get thousands of people to higher ground.

Witnesses said cars were swept out to sea in American Samoa where buildings were destroyed in what the US congressman for the territory said was a scene of “devastation.”

The US Geological Survey said an 8.0-magnitude quake struck at 6:48 am (1748 GMT) at a depth of 18 kilometres (11 miles), 195 kilometres south of the Samoan capital Apia.

[T]he centre said waves of up to 1.57 metres (over five feet) above the average sea level had smashed into American Samoa.

Eyewitnesses said the waves were much larger.

["They] said five tsunami waves have hit the park visitor centre in Pago Pago. It would appear park offices and the visitor centre there have been destroyed. “One of the waves was about 30 feet high.”

Samoan journalist Jona Tuiletufuga told AFP there was widespread destruction with possibly thousands of people left homeless on the island.

“We are getting reports of missing people in areas were damage is extensive on the south and southeast coasts,” he told AFP. “Entire villages have been wiped out.”

Tuiletufuga said there were up to 70 villages in the worst-hit area and each housed from 300-800 people.

A New Zealand tourist who called Radio New Zealand to appeal for help said he was looking over an area of destruction from high ground near Apia.

“We clambered up a hill and one of the party has a broken leg. We just need help. There will be people in a great lot of need around here, it’s flattened.” Information from both islands was patchy.

American Samoan radio station KSBS-FM said at least 14 people had been killed by the quake and resulting tsunami.

New Zealand deputy high commissioner to Apia, David Dolphin, said five people were reported to have died on the island.

Most of the damage appeared to be centred on southern coast where waves of six to eight metres were recorded, he said.

“There are reports of some quite serious damage, at least five fatalities and quite a few reports of people missing,” said Dolphin, who was on the north coast at the time.

[A] series of powerful aftershocks rattled the South Pacific in the hours after the initial quake.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre initially issued a tsunami warning for a large area of the South Pacific including Fiji, New Zealand and Tonga.

The USGS said the 8.0-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 18 kilometres.

Several of the Earth’s tectonic plates meet in South Pacific and violent geological activity is common.

Large quakes with an under-ocean epicentre can trigger tsunamis that can have devastating effects.

In December 2004 an undersea earthquake off Indonesia’s Sumatra set off a tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean and laid waste to huge areas of coastline.

via news.yahoo.com

Posted via web from SophiaZoe

The truth will out

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Sep 292009

As Social Media evolves, and our adoption of it en mass, we occasionally get stories such as this:

Via Mashable.com

In Bozeman, Montana misunderstanding social media may be a way of life, but in Calumet County, Wisconsin it’s proven to be the difference between a job in law enforcement and unemployment.

Last month Jennifer Bass, a Calumet County sheriff’s deputy, decided to literally burn off workplace steam in an unsettling way. She, along with friends, took to her backyard to burn a stuffed officer’s uniform, using sticky notes to identify fellow officers, in effigy.

She also filmed and photographed the burning in effigy, posting video and photos of the incident to herFacebook profile (footage included below). Now that the video, which includes racial remarks regarding the KKK, has surfaced to an audience beyond just Facebook friends, she’s since resigned from her position.

County Sheriff, Jerry Page, is openly apologizing for the incident, which was brought to his attention by an undisclosed third-party source. Also feeling the heat is Wendy Schmitz, a Sherriff’s investigator that was seen in photos posted to Facebook from the incident. Even though she attributes the racist statements to her coworker, she has admitted to participating in the burning and has been demoted as a result.

It’s an unfortunate stain on the county’s reputation, which claims to use Facebook for assistance with their everyday investigations. More information on the incident, and actual footage, can be seen in this FOX 11 report included below [media box].

On the one hand it’s a good thing we find out about the foibles of those who enjoy “public trust”, such as police, politicians, doctors, lawyers, clergy, etc. On the other hand, there is such a thing as having a private life, a private life that has personal opinions, values, and the occasional bad behavior. Well, I know I’m imperfect, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who was perfect, so I only operating on the assumption that everyone has that “occasional bad behavior”.

But we as a society have agreed upon standards of behavior, and our collective imperfectness aside, we coexist in large part because we can “politely ignore the possible imperfections” of people’s personalities as we come in casual contact with them. Where it gets uncomfortable is when we have to come fact to face with those “imperfections” in situations where we can not “politely ignore” them. Such as the public becoming aware of this officer’s behavior [on her own property, with her own property, and on her own time].

Having been a cop for a number of years I understand “blowing off steam“. I also know that off duty cops can be quite ill-behaved and rowdy – among their fellows, the only place many feel comfortable enough to let their guard down enough to show their inner stupidity, personality flaws and weaknesses. But, cops gotta get a clue: there is no genuine “on your own time” – they are a cop 24/7/365. They also gotta get a clue: there is nothing private in this age of the internet, and cell phone cameras/videos. Plus, they really gotta get a clue on this one: Facebook & MySpace are not private…

THE TRUTH WILL OUT.

That’s a good thing for the public. Who wants imperfect people patrolling their streets? And, that’s not a flippant question. We expect a much higher standard of behavior from certain professions. If those in those professions are not able – or willing – to live up to those higher standards they need to do us and themselves a favor and MOVE ALONG TO SOME OTHER PROFESSION.