14 DAY TRIAL // Another day, another Twitter study and this one is as shocking as the rest. It turns out that most Twitter users, 80 percent, are completely self-centered, with most of their tweets being about themselves. The study was conducted by Rutgers University Professors Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase who set out to research what type of content social media users usually dish out.
In the study they analyzed 3,000 tweets from 350 Twitter users and spread them between nine types depending on their scope. They also grouped together the tweets based on whether they were meant to spread information or news or just provide a status update from the user. The Twitterers were split into two main categories, the “informers,” who post informative messages, and what the researches called the “meformers,” who post “Me Now” messages about their whereabouts, interests or thoughts.
“While meformers typically post messages relating to themselves or their thoughts, informers post messages that are informational in nature,” the authors wrote [PDF]. However, while posting about themselves may seem a little self-absorbed, the researchers believe that it may not necessarily be a bad thing in the context of social media. “Although the meformers’ self-focus might be characterized by some as self-indulgent, these messages may play an important role in helping users maintain relationships with strong and weak ties.”
Not surprisingly though, while the bulk of Twitter's user base is made up of meformers and only 20 percent of informers, the latter are more active and more engaged. In fact, only 40 percent of the tweets fall directly into the “Me Now” category while the rest also have some sort of informative value. Also, informers tend to have more followers and more friends, on average, 112 followers and 131 friends, while the meformers have on average only 43 followers and 61 friends.