[REBLOG] Interesting fact: more Tweets posted are 28 characters than any other length [Updated]

This article was originally posted on TheNextWeb.com on January 7, 2012, by Matthew Panzarino. You can read the original article here.

If you’ve ever wondered how long the average Tweet is, then this graph should answer some questions for you. Created by Twitter employee Isaac Hepworth, it is a sampling of 1 million Tweets published on the network, excluding retweets. The graph is plotted out by number of characters and allows for a couple of interesting conclusions to be drawn. Updates below.

Among those is the fact that most Tweets are around 30 characters long. To be exact, Hepworth says that the spikes are at 28 and 31.

In addition to the average length, there is also a rather large spike at 140 characters. At first this might seem suspicious, but Hepworth brings up a good point when he attributes it to either Tweets that are edited down to the max character limit in order to fit, or split into multiple Tweets when they can’t be made to fit.

It also seems that once people get to around the 100 character range, they’re in it for the long haul, as it slopes back upwards at 120+ characters. This may be attributable to link-shortened URL’s that are Tweeted out with post titles from blogs and websites. Most titles from publications, like this one, attempt to deliver the maximum amount of information, while still leaving room for URLs and space for re-tweeted opinions. The 110 character point is roughly the sweet spot.

Does this graph fit in with your Tweeting habits? Does it make you feel like sending more 115 character Tweets to stand out from the crowd? Let us know in the comments.

Update: Interesting. Hepworth posted up a second chart that represents just tweets from the ‘desktop’ web client and it shows an even more pronounced spike at the 140 character limit. This would indicate that those Tweets are more likely edited down to the maximum length, rather than filled out automatically using a service like Twitlonger.

You’ll note that the spikes at 28 and 31 are gone as well, although the overall trend towards 30 characters remains.

I chatted briefly with Hemsowrth about his findings and he was quick to correct me on the ’30 character length’ numbers. In fact 28 characters represents the mode value of the sample. This means that there are more Tweets in the sample that are 28 characters in length than any other number, but these don’t represent a majority overall.

Interactive Project: The Hello Wall

This is another example of a great project that uses social networking crowd-sourcing. I re-discovered this while looking through my Twitter following list. Check it out:

The project gathers @replies and mentions from Twitter, and displays an animation on a giant screen mounted on a building based on users’ tweets. (When it first came out, it was mounted in London, but now, it’s looking for a place to stay.)

HELLO NEW TWITTER!

Well, I’ve been waiting for what seems forever, but my preview of the new Twitter has finally come.

I absolutely love the aesthetics of the new Twitter! Here’s some of my favorite new features:

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Twitter gets another redesign

According to Twitter, the new homepage brings more info about trending topics to the front lines. I totally agree with that. The previous redesign made Twitter a lot simpler, almost too simple. This time, they got it right.

Pages: 1 2

Happy 4th Birthday Twitter!

Dear , Happy 4th Birthday!

Along with Facebook, YouTube, and Myspace, you have revolutionized our lives. Whether it’s good or bad, I’d like to say Happy Birthday with some lists and infographics:

Twitter tweets accelerate to 50 million per day

The Path to 1 Billion Tweets (by Mashable)

Favorites of Twitter:

• Retweet feature
• Flashcard feature
• Minor word tweaks
• Echofon Twitter app released
• Interface (simple and straightforward)

Dislikes of Twitter:

• Spam
• Constant phishing attacks
• Not a lot of people (like Facebook)

You can follow me (@Deathgleaner) or my blog (@tboxblog) on Twitter.

http://deathgleaner.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/quick-look-twitter-flashcards/

Twitter’s 385 banned passwords

Did you know that there are 386 passwords that you can’t use to log in to your account? It’s true! But, that 386 less passwords for hackers to try to guess (of course, if you pick a secure password no one’s gonna get it.) How do we know? These passwords are all in a comma-delimited list of banned passwords in the Twitter.com/signup source code.

Quick Look: Twitter flashcards

Twitter flashcards

What are Twitter flashcards? You may not know, because they were introduced very recently.

To the left is a screenshot. Basically, whenever you scroll over someone’s name, whether it be in a mention or before the actual tweet, one of these will pop up. You can follow the person, unfollow, and see their statistics as shown to the left. It’s a very helpful tool since you don’t have to go directly to their user page to view all this.

Some apps, like Echofon for Firefox, already have this feature, but it’s not as good.

Happy Anniversary!

At the time of posting this, I have officially had my Twitter account for EXACTLY one year now. Here are a few statistics about my Twitter account:

No posts in a while

This is because I’ve been busy lately and there’s nothing to blog about. Even Quick Look is slowing down. But the site still gets a base view of 10 views per day. Almost reached 50 on January 7th- the highest in a while.

Hopefully things get going again soon.

Also… my Twitter account is almost one year old…

Quick Look: On the other hand, TweetCaster is pretty good

After getting really pissed off with Uber Twitter, I decided to look for more Twitter applications. I found one called TweetCaster.
Unlike Uber(fail)Twitter, TweetCaster actually works. Its interface is more elegant, although I have to admit that each individual tweet takes up more space than it needs to. No ads, and there’s actually a toolbar showing mentions, tweets, direct messages, search, trending topics, and these aren’t crammed into a huge menu, and it doesn’t take three minutes to load tweets. But like Uber Twitter, the app does freeze from time to time (maybe it’s just my phone)

And one more minor thing – the automatic refresh is 30 seconds at the least.

My recommendation – if you’re hunting for a Twitter app, this app is your best shot. I give it a 7/10 and recommend it, especially over Uber(fail)Twitter.