The blogosphere is abuzz with digs at Twitter over the latest news that 71% of all tweets get no response, meaning they are not retweeted or directly responded to.

Of 1.2 Billion Twitter Posts, 71% are Ignored – Slashdot

It’s Not Just You: 71 Percent of Tweets Are Ignored – Wired

However, please consider that as a marketer, if your initial goal is to get people to amplify what you tweet:

• What response do you get from your magazine or newspaper ads? 29%?
• What conversion rate do you get for direct mail? Cold calls? I’m betting that if you got just 1/10th of 29% your company would throw you a parade.
• What percentage of people who saw your TV ad later mentioned it to somebody else?

Many (most?) tweets are not worthy of engagement. We all know that many tweets are quite mundane, which of course means that tweets that are actually useful get better than a 29% response.

I think it’s quite remarkable that 29% of tweets are amplified. Truly amazing.