SpinVox recently ran a survey among Americans, British, and Canadian users of Ping (a service that allows users to update social media via voice through SpinVox’s ASR) to, at least ostensibly, “reveal new slang emerging in the Twittersphere.”
The results produced by the study were the sort just ripe for blogging about. As much as 84 percent of SpinVox’d Twitter users admitted to using the service in public mid-travel, while 23 percent admitted to tweeting from the john, A.K.A. “the W.C.”
Whether or not this means public restrooms and there’s any overlap between that 84 and 23 percent is unclear. SpinVox did not provide a Venn Diagram.
Thirteen percent of users said they used the service on a treadmill, 25 percent jogging in the park, 37 percent while cooking, 17 percent outdoors events like music festivals, 8 percent, and 5 percent waiting in lines.
The “top 10 Twitterverse-releated slang words” (I’ll in the new tradition of making annoying words out of “Twitter” call these “Twitterese”) SpinVox found in the SpinVox “Voxgeist” (C’mon! Really?) are:
- Hashtag (noun): a way of marking an event or common theme e.g. “I’m off to Mobile Geeks of New York #MGoNY”
- #Follow Friday (term – pron. Hash Follow Friday): a weekly event, where you recommend your favorite Twitterers to your followers.
- Dabr (noun): a mobile web interface for Twitter.
- Twetiquette (term): appropriate behavior when using Twitter.
- Twitpoll (noun): a survey/question posed on Twitter, often for research. Sometimes just for fun: e.g.: “Which shoes should I buy?”
- Tweetdeck (noun): one of the most popular desktop interfaces for Twitter.
- Twhirl (noun): a smaller, less intrusive desktop interface for Twitter.
- Mashable Effect (term): the result of @mashable, aka Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable.com, re-tweeting your site/blog address and causing it to overload with web traffic.
- Tweetup (noun): a meeting organized on Twitter.
- Twestival (noun): a charity event organized using Twitter
Strangely missing from the list, my brother Adam B. points out, are “speechtacular,” “Speechlandia,” “Speech Head,” and “None of your speechness.”
I have to say, I’m a bit skeptical of how scientifically rigorous this effort was myself. SpinVox hasn’t released a methodology, so no word on sample size or how these figures are derived.
When I asked the company about what kind of standards it was using, Rachel Lyons, SpinVox’s Director of North American Communications, said, “[We] would say the survey was more straw poll than census.”
Hrm.
I’m still willing to give SpinVox the benefit of the doubt here, though. I’m sure their numbers check out, but with questions asking users if they tweet on the can this survey begins to strike me as the sort of thing that is concocted to produce the whimsy and mirth that gets reposted on blogs. The kind of thing that collaterally gets the word out about the fact that you can use SpinVox on Twitter—-a clever P.R. move rather than a question of genuine scientific inquiry. In fact, come to think of it, this study or straw poll or whatever seems suspiciously like a lot of other top ten list based posts that SpinVox has made to be blogged about…
On that count, Speech Heads, I suppose we’re guilty, but why not make yourself complicit in shameless marketing, too? Make sure to follow Speech Tech on Twitter! http://twitter.com/SpeechTech/
