“Pointless Babble” in Social Media
Based on a short study conducted in 2009 regarding Twitter use by Pear Analytics, it segregated tweet contents into at least six (6) categories namely pointless babble – 40%, conversational – 38%, pass-along value – 9%, self-promotion – 6%, spam – 4% and news – 4%. Pointless babble which sounds so useless and wasteful of time when categorized as such includes the desire to know “what people are doing, thinking, and feeling” as pointed out by a social networking researcher. The term has understandably offended many tweeters which resulted to some sort of word war for its clarification.
The phenomenon which makes it possible to provide the most mundane and inconsequential information available to everyone as observed in other social media platforms as well is probably the crux of the matter. Social media today has inadvertently allowed people to impose their “will” on others by flooding the platform with information that are better kept to themselves. I would like to think that this communication venue has been developed for people to stay connected and not be burdened by a tremendous load of messages that are mostly “pointless babble”, so to speak.
Relevance of tweets or posts is highly subjective. What constitutes pointless for some may be important to others. It really all depends on who is getting what messages. It is a fact that some of these messages can be classified under “conversational” which is obviously not offensive. That said, social media platforms should provide an option for people who think that they are being plagued by tiresome messages from their own acquaintances.
