Can You Tell Who I Really Am From My Tweets? Experts Say Yes

Do you think you can tell anything about someone by their tweets?

I believe I can.  I have friends who tweet every single thing they do -- what they're eating for dinner, what music they're listening to, even their new running shoes.  (WHO CARES? I often want to tweet back.)  But I know these people are just self-obsessed and desperate for attention.

Then there are those who like to bloviate about what's going on in the world.  Sometimes the opinions are learned (that's when they agree with me), but most of the time it's just people blowing off steam (or hot air).

But now a new study that looked at more than 20 million tweets has uncovered that we tend to tweet more negatively during the week, and more positively on the weekend and that people in urban and rural areas experience situations that are, for the most part, psychologically similar, according to newswise.com.

People frequently tweet about their locations, what they are doing, how they are feeling, or things they find interesting in the present moment. In other words, people tend to Tweet about the situations they experience.  Or, in the case of my obsessed friends, every (boring) detail of their lives.

“Twitter is a digital stream of consciousness of its users," say researchers.  “There are few compilations of data on human thought, behavior, and emotions this vast, making Twitter an excellent medium for understanding human experience.”

You can observe personalities and behaviors that range from embarrassing and narcissistic to generous and sublime, says writer Molly Greene." It’s like eavesdropping on a thousand conversations at once. And it’s easy to pick out personalities from a few simple tweets, because true character shines through."

One expert says we're tweeting out of a lack of identity (of course, he called it "twittering" so I guess that speaks for him!).  But who doesn't enjoy it, most of the time?  I stick to tweeting pieces that I write for my blog, mostly informational, but I have to confess that I do post photos and brags about my teenager on Facebook.

But that's for another time. Now I'll tweet this. 




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