On Twitter, Information Beats Sentiment
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University recently revealed the results of a study which looked into how people were using Twitter to talk about products. Companies, of course, fear what a negative barrage of tweets can do to their brand, leading many to establish Twitter accounts themselves to provide information, customer service, and support. As it turns out, these businesses may not need to worry too much about what the "Twitter effect" can do to their image after all. The study revealed that the number of brand-related tweets where sentiment is expressed is not the dominating force that you may think. In fact, the majority of tweets mentioning a brand are merely casual comments or tweets from someone giving or seeking information. And when sentiment is expressed, it's generally positive.
More Tweets are Information-Seeking, Not Opinions
According to the study, which looked at 150,000 tweets, 11.1% of the brand-related tweets were information-providing while 18.1% were information-seeking. The latter of these two is especially useful to companies looking to understand what questions and concerns customers have about their products. However, the large majority of the tweets - 48.5% - were simply comments made in passing which mentioned the brand but whose primary focus was something else.
The remaining 22.3% of tweets were sentiment-related, meaning tweets in which a user was expressing an opinion about a brand, either negative or positive. What was surprising about this subset was that users were more likely to express positive tweets than they were to complain.
Why So Cheery, Twitter?
This seems odd, actually, given that the Internet has typically been a place for disgruntled consumers to rant and rave more so than it's been a place to praise what works. You can see this type of negative sentiment expressed everywhere from online forums to whiny blog posts about how such-and-such company "did me wrong!" In fact, the desire to express a negative opinion even seems to dominate feedback systems like blog comments, for example. Rarely does a writer receive comments like "great post" or "I totally agree" - rather, more comments resemble "you're wrong and here's why" or "how could you not mention X?"
That's why it's strange to hear that on Twitter, it's positive sentiment that reigns. What makes this platform different from the rest of the Internet as a whole? Are Twitter users simply happier people? Or has the data been skewed by marketing campaigns where Twitter users are encouraged to tweet nice things about the company in order to win a prize?
Perhaps it's because Twitter simply makes it easier to express yourself, allowing for a better balance between negative and positive sentiments. Typically, sharing your opinion on the web meant exerting a good deal of effort. Writing a blog post, recording a video, or leaving a blog comment are things that take time. For the most part, busy, information-overloaded web surfers aren't going to take that time unless something really gets them fired up. Twitter, on the other hand, is so quick and easy to use, you can post a missive of joy in only seconds. And the 140-character limit allows you a no-pressure way of doing so.
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We're looking at millions of brand-related tweets to create http://rankspeed.com and I confirm that most of them are neutral, some are positive and few are negative.
The percentage of positive tweets is really relevant if you compare this number with other brands. One number alone does not really make sense.
Without going into a long dissertation on the psychology of color, I'd say a contributing factor to Twitter positiveness is the GUI.
"happy", "cute", bordering on cartoonish ( in a good way ) look and feel, the great emphasis on left-to-right page read with profile pictures being first, plus the subtle use of serif and sans serif fonts, all subliminally contribute to positive input.
I soo... wish you guys (and e-marketer, who reports on the study) would include the citation to the original source. Was this study published? Where? Who are the authors? If I want to read the original study, where do I find it?
I assume it's based on this news release from PSU:
http://live.psu.edu/story/41067 - and they don't provide a citation either :(
Different purpse for communication. If I'm in a support forum - chances are I have a problem. With blogs -the format itself seems to solicit feedback - "here's info, little opinion, what do you think?". So the commenter goes into critical thinking mode. Same story with forums. Now social networking on the other hand is a different story. For most of us Twitter is not yet a forum for conversation, more like shouting into a clammed of other voices. So we tend to speak with emotion, especially current emotion. So it's more natural to say "I love Foldgers". Plus, how many blog posts make you think about the morning cup.
WRONG! Sarah, you did not read the chart correctly. It says that 11.1% were seeking information and 18.1% requesting it; not the other way around. Also, this study is more than a year old. Given Twitter's growth over the last year I wonder whether the findings remain valid.
I, too, would like to read the original research writeup.
I would be interested how the findings relate to corporate activities against those tweets--marketing teams might want to identify brand related sentiment while customer service teams might want to identify and solve product issues.
Finally, I would be curious to know if they used any tools or made their own for this analysis.
The interface comment -- i.e. the look of the website -- doesn't hold much water as most people use some other client to access Twitter. However, as Ms. Perez has stated, the interface -- as in 140 character limit and easy access -- is likely the reason.
Elsewhere, you'll have to be rather motivated to create an account on some forum, or whatever, to post a comment. Twitter has a much larger reach, so you only need to create an account in one place. Meanwhile, I say the pressure of squeezing a meaningful comment into 140 chars is likely a positive factor, for both favorable and derogatory comments.
That said, add me to the list of people that want to see the original study.
From my experience with twitter over the last year it seems like twitter has become a pretty incentivized platform which might help form user perception.
Form Dell giving away coupons, to lesser known small business launching apps and products with free or low cost trials, To...let's not forget all of the affiliate offers you can stomach, youtube channels galore, and the random invites to "join me on facebook."
I think there's too much going on to track the amount of complaints through a survey...Plus how do you decipher a tone in a 140 character tweet? did they track down the beginning of the conversations?
Broadly speaking, we see a similar breakdown across social media types here at Scout Labs. Most mentions of most things are neutral- "watching a netflix"- rather than expressed opinions whether the content is blog posts, tweets, or even Facebook group comments. There are some gems out there: "I am enjoying the INSTANT WATCH functioning of Netflix through my Xbox Live account" or "I think I will skip giving Comcast a call, and save myself some money and couch-potatoness. I much prefer just having Netflix" or "The website for browsing DVD releases on the Netflix site is amazing!" which can provide marketers with wonderful unsolicited insights into the mind of the market. One of the things we're very proud of at Scout Labs is the ability to extract these pull quotes, helping marketers see just what those opinions are.
Unless you have had an extraordinary customer experience or a dreadful one then you are not going to be bother to write and tell anyone, when was the last time you emailed a company to complain or compliment???
Tweets complement the lazy lifestyle of some many internet users, and consequently impart information that ordinarily would have just stayed as thoughts in consumer’s heads or expressed via passing comments. Twitter enable passing comments to be read and analysis by a far bigger audience rather than just the people in ear shot.