The range of Twitter continues to grow, and the microblogging service is apparently now important enough to itself be a subject of research. A recent Rutgers University study looked at the different ways that people use Twitter. For the full story, see “80% of Twitter Users Are All About Me” (Mashable.com), but I’ll summarize. Basically, the researchers classified tweets into eight types. I think a brief discussion of these types might be useful for nonprofits thinking about either starting a Twitter account or trying to make theirs more effective.

The types were: Information Sharing, Self Promotion, Opinions/Complaints, Statements and Random Thoughts, Me Now (personal status updates), Question to Followers, Presence Maintenance, and Anecdotes. Actually, technically there were nine types, but two were different kinds of anecdotes, and that just seemed unnecessary.

The main result of the study (and the source of Mashable’s headline) was that 80% of their quite small sample of 350 users were using Twitter mostly as a “Me Now” service, posting personal updates and not much else. I have to assume that this leaves out spammers … but anyway, the question it brings to mind is this: How much of each of these types should a nonprofit Twitter account be posting?
» Read more: What Kind of Twitterer Should You Be?