Legal Research

It Takes The Equivalent of 166 Tweets To Tell Us How We Use Twitter

Danny Sullivan has a meaty post — 23,125 characters, the equivalent of 166 Tweets! — on how we search with the Twitter “Help Engine”. Danny’s poll about whether Twitter is a search engine or not got more than 450 responses. Here’s the summary:

• Half ask a question on Twitter at least once per week
• Nearly 40% are “usually” satisfied with the answers they get
• Half “sometimes” or “often” turn to Twitter for questions rather than a traditional search engine
• Only 4% said they’d give up a traditional search engine for Twitter
• Nearly half said they ask questions on Twitter because they trust their friends or followers more than search results or are seeking expert answers
• 40% said they seek answers to “real time” issues or they want a variety of opinions
• Nearly 70% said questions they asked were related to computer or the internet, followed by 44% asking questions about Twitter, then 41% asking about shopping or product advice

Danny also includes the comments. Here’s my favorite: “I think Twitter at the moment is over-hyped. Period.”

Hmm … Where have I heard that before?

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on March 13, 2009 (boomark / email).