[Air-L] twitter useless to study?

[Barry Wellman]

As an object of study, its hard to do quant analysis of Twitter now 
because so much of it is spam (unless you're studying spam, that is).

And even qualitative analyses will have to be careful.

Our 2 Twitterology papers got into the sweet spot when Twitter was an 
appreciable size but before spam dominated (about 80% of my new would-be 
Followers)

OTOH, I find Twitter useful for research leads -- such as the Atlantic 
article a tweep broadcast today about how the Internet almost fractured -- 
or Zeynep et al's (@techsoc) discussion of social media and MENA 
revolutions.
  Barry Wellman
  _______________________________________________________________________

   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC               NetLab Director
   Department of Sociology                  725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388
   University of Toronto   Toronto Canada M5S 2J4   twitter:barrywellman
   http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman             fax:+1-416-978-3963
   Updating history:      http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
  _______________________________________________________________________