The Industry

A Tweet classification scheme

When writing software to look at the content of posts on the internet, on blogs and on Twitter, one can just use keyword and keyword context metrics, or one can be a little smarter.

Using somewhat heuristically based algorithms, one can classify blog posts and tweets, and in particular, tweeps, into several common categories for the purpose of assigning a relevance and usefulness level to a poster of information, in particular to other people outside their inner circle.

1. Chit chat: communicating with friends

2. Promotion: most of the posts are links to a particular product or blog

3. News disseminator: many links to stories found in many places on the net

4. Observer: observations and comments about what is happening

Some people have posts/tweets that fall into multiple of these categories, and often they will is some large part mimic the others in their inner circle.

One can’t help but observe that the number of followers / readers (aka success) typically is inversely related to the number of the category on this list. (i.e. observers / pundits get most of the traffic and interest on average)

This success function is easy to see with, say, Justin Bieber’s tweeps where just a few popular tweeps post observations and comments - but who are also the most popular tweeps.

The Tweeps for Wine are more balanced, many chatting a little, but mostly observing and disseminating news. The High-end Audio tweeps, however, are mostly promotional, with just a little news dissemination thrown in.