41% of tweets can be classified as 'pointless babble'

Breakdown of contents, based on a random sample of 2,000 tweets:
"News - 3.60%
Spam - 3.75%
Self-promotion - 5.85%
Pointless babble - 40.55%
Conversational - 37.55%
Pass-along value - 8.70%"

Classification was as follows:
"News
Any sort of main stream news that you might find on your national news stations such as CNN, Fox or others. This did not include tech news or social media news that you might find on TechCrunch or Mashable.
Spam
These are the tweets such as “See how I got 3,000 followers in one day” type of tweets.
Self-Promotion
These are typical corporate tweets about products, services, or “Twitter only” promos.
Pointless Babble
These are the “I am eating a sandwich now” tweets.
Conversational
These are tweets that go back and forth between folks, almost in an instant message fashion, as well as tweets that try to engage followers in conversation, such as questions or polls.
Pass-Along Value
These are any tweets with an “RT” in it.
Now, if there were any tweets that could fit into more than one category (which was rare), if it started with “@”, we deemed it as conversational, even if it was a news item or self-promotion."
Source: Pages 4&5 of Pear Analytics twitter Study, August 2009

Only 27% of US visitors to twitter are regular users

"Twitter reaches 27 million people per month in the U.S.
55% are female
43% are between 18 and 34
78% Caucasian, but African American users are 35% above Internet average
Average household income is between $30 and $60k
1% of the addicts contribute 35% of the visits
72% are passers by, while only 27% are regular users"
Source: Page 3 of Pear Analytics twitter Study, August 2009

Membership of virtual worlds grew by 39% in Q2 2009

"The consultancy kzero.co.uk reports that membership of virtual worlds grew by 39% in the second quarter of 2009 to an estimated 579 million."
Source: Kzero, quoted by The Guardian, 29th July 2009
More data:
"Almost all of the 39% growth came from children. Girls used to grow up with their dolls; now they are growing up with their avatars. This goes largely unreported because the users don't read newspapers, but as Kzero reports, poptropica.com – aimed at five- to 10-year-olds – has 76 million registered users. If you move up to 10- to 15-year-olds, users rival the populations of countries – led by Habbo (135 million), Neopets (54 million), Star Dolls (34 million) and Club Penguin (28 million). It starts tailing off among 15- to 25-year-olds – apart from Poptropica (35 million) – but it underlines the likelihood that as youngsters get older they will be looking for more sophisticated outlets and for ways to link existing social networks such as Facebook or MySpace to more immersive virtual worlds."

Approximately 12% of Americans bought virtual goods in the last 12 months

"Roughly 12 percent of Americans, or more than one in 10, have bought a virtual item at some point in the last 12 months, according to a new study by analyst firm Frank N. Magid Associates and commissioned by virtual currency provider PlaySpan. With the virtual goods and currency market estimated to reach $1.8 billion this year"
Source: Frank N. Magid Associates, as reported by Gigaom, 30th July 2009

CD and hard drive music collections of 14-24s in the UK compared

"The average digital music collection - ie all the music on a respondent’s computer or hard drive - was 8,159 tracks. (If we equate a single track as being 3 minutes in length, that's approximately 17 days' worth of continuous music.)"
On the other hand:
"Respondents still exhibit a strong desire to "own" music and most still purchase CDs.
Only a small number of respondents (4%) do not use CDs at all and 51% have fewer than 100 CDs (both original and copied).
The average collection was 70 CDs for the 14-17's and 98 CDs for the 18-24 age group - a significant increase on 2008's figures."
Source: UK Music survey pdf, 10th August 2009

Over 50% of 14-24 year olds living in the UK use P2P networks or torrent trackers to download music on a daily or weekly level

"Popularity of P2P remains unchanged since 2008 – 61% said they download music using P2P networks or torrent trackers. Of this group, 83% are doing so on a weekly or daily basis"
(83% of 61% = 50.6%)
Source: UK Music survey, 10th August 2009

86% of 14-24 year olds in the UK have copied a CD for a friend

"86% of respondents have copied a CD for a friend; 75% have sent music by email, Bluetooth, Skype or MSN; 57% have copied a friend's entire music collection; 39% have downloaded music from an online storage site; and 38% have ripped a TV, radio or internet stream"
Source: UK Music survey, 10th August 2009