Although I have tentatively embraced (very British of me) the macro-weblogging world, I am pleased to say that I shun other faddish forms of frivolous webfrippery.
The bastion of all news sources, Auntie Beeb, reports that (much like jaded ol’ capitalism), 90% of twitter tweets are posted by 10% of sad loners tweeting twits.
Try saying that after a facefull of Tia Maria’s!
Harvard business school researchers went on to say:
And most people only ever “tweet” once during their lifetime.
I find it hard enough to maintain regularly activity on this blog (although I theoretically hang about here a bit more often), never mind micro-blogging mundane minutes more metronomically.
In other news, it’s Mrs F’s birthday today. Feliç aniversari, hotlips!
I’m now going to one-up Bob and go for a wireless walk, without my laptop.
Not Mrs F. Some fictional time ago.
That is all.
This
That just reminded me of aimless political rambling to justify a dodgy political decision (which almost deserves its own post on NN1). It also reminded me this
Does a 49 year old kuniggit actually know how 2 rite in txt speak? He doesn’t even know how to update his government webpage (try the first hit).
1 Lord Drayson, Minister for Science in the UK
PolytechnicDepartment of Business, Innovation & Skills, has recently returned to the position of Minister of State for Defence Equipment and Support, holding both positions simultaneously. Some people are concerned that there may be an ethical or other conflict of interest, and that the Minister of Science should concentrate on the important job of, errr, thinking about science.I’m encouraged that someone in Parliament is actually engaging with the electorate. Of course he won’t change his mind due to an argument on twitter, but at least he knows how people think and that we’re reminding him there are real people out here.
Do you really believe it’s him and not some under junior civil servant? You’re allowed to – but I remain highly sceptical. The actual information content of the collated twits was close to zero. I shall attempt to summarise:
Concerned, from buckinghamstoke: "Errr, shouldn’t the Minister for Science be so busy doing sciencey things that he can’t really squeeze in another enormous portfolio, especially when the other one’s defence?
Lord Snooty: “Nah, it’s alright, guvnor. I’m a petrolhead, and it’s good to integrate sciencey things with everything else. Don’t worry about the military stuff though. Just look over here a moment.” [muffled thump]
I don’t find it all strange that 90% of Twitter posts are by 10% of the people. Apart from being an approximation to the 80:20 ‘rule’, it just reflects what Twitter is. It’s not a social networking site in the same sense as Facebook, it is microblogging.
From that perspective it’s quite a high percentage of people contributing. After all, a newspaper is typically written by less than 0.02% of the people who read it, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who read conventional blogs but don’t write them themselves.
When you use Twitter, you’re in good company … Governor Goodhair company, that is.
Key quote: It doesn’t get more real than inane minutae.
NB. “Governor Goodhair” was the late Molly Ivins’ nickname for Rick Perry.