Your Followers Don't Give a Damn About Your Breakfast but They Don't Mind Your Shameless Self-Promotion

A quarter of tweets are useless. A third are disliked. Is Twitter a time-sucking void of meaningless garbage?

Time-sucking it may be, but meaningless it is not. But the above data is indeed true, according to a new study. Conducted by a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, the study reveals that roughly are quarter of all tweets are "useless" and about one-third get a thumbs down from the Twitterverse. Even so, this doesn't erode the value of Twitter, which is tremendous.

"Clearly, many people still like using Twitter,” said Paul André, lead author of the study. Commenting on a portion of tweets lacking value, Paul says, "think of your everyday face-to-face conversations. Do you really value 100% of them?” Nobody will realistically say yes to that.

What Twitterers crave most is new information. In fact, they're so hungry for it, that they don't even mind self-promotion if it links to new content, the research suggests. So while no one gives a crap about whether or not your bacon and eggs satisfied you at breakfast, you won't take much flack for fanning your feathers.