Is Twitter just “pointless babble?”

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40% of posts on Twitter are “pointless babble” according to the latest media headlines. That data comes from a recent study on Twitter usage by Pear Analytics. Obviously, the “pointless babble” characterization was going to spark headlines, especially among those just looking for any reason to sneer at the heavily (and some would say overly) hyped microblogging site. But regardless of how you feel about the platform, those dismissive headlines also overshadow other useful insights captured in the report.

For now, table the higher level discussion about relationship-building and brand engagement and just look objectively at the other data points in the same report. The “conversational” and “pass-along value” categories respectively comprised 37.55% and 8.7% of all posts captured in the study. If you consider dialogue between people valuable (or at least not totally pointless) and “pass-along value” by definition means people found something interesting enough to share with other people, then more than 46% of all tweets were “not pointless babble.”

Twitter: useful or pointless babble?

Admittedly, that doesn’t make for a snarky, attention grabbing headline. Or maybe this is a sign that Twitter really is slipping into the “trough of disillusionment” according to Gartner.

Either way, the debate over Twitter’s value isn’t black and white. It makes sense for some organizations and not others. Depending on who you are, who’s important to you and what you want to accomplish that answer will vary. Media headlines can make for interesting discussion but do yourself a favor and look closer at answering some of those questions. That way you’ll have something thoughtful to say the next time someone spouts off about Twitter being nothing more than pointless babble…

Does Twitter make sense for your company or do you think it’s just gibberish? What’s your take?