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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