Fellow online PR Danny Whatmough posed the question today about whether social media is really about ‘ego.’ Clearly I don’t think it is, but in reply I referenced the Oxford Academic Press stat that the second most popular word on Twitter is “I.”
Journalism and SEO blogger Malcolm Coles then joined the conversation to point out that incidences of “I” tend to vanish around lunchtime, so most narcissists tend to be around in the morning (that’s when I tweet…).
Malcolm originally published his post in April, but the chart on his blog from Trendistic is a dynamic one (I’ve taken a version below) and so the results are constantly up to date. And sure enough, the Dec stats show exactly the same as the April ones.
Every single day last week the use of “I” in tweets was at a high in the morning in the UK (so middle of the Night US - when maybe people are on who don’t use Twitter professionally?), visibly dropped by lunch GMT (7am EST), and then started climbing again until it reached its late night US / early morning UK peak.
Not sure how much you can really read into this, but it does give an indication of when personal tweeters who talk about their lives are likely to be on, and when you can catch those who log on mainly for work / network building reasons.
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This seems a little intuitive: We write more personal stuff in morning or evening, and when at work are more likely to write in work mode. Hence more “I’s” in the a.m. and p.m.
Having said that, Dirk, you touch a good issue on how egocentric Twitter often is. The best example was the “lists” fad — a lot of people grew rapidly concerned about the number of lists they were on, and I wonder how many actually used lists as a tool to listen to others.
Of course, self-expression is not necessarily bad. I recall back in the 1980s that commentators were worried about the illiteracy in American and overuse of television. Now, we have people thinking and creative material. Even if much revolves around the creator, that’s a positive trend.