Twitter: What *are* people doing?

Twitter: What are people doing?

Twitter exists solely for people to answer the question "What are you doing?", and its users have been answering that question thousands of times per day since it launched. In an effort to find out what exactly Twitter's users are doing, I checked a sample of 500,000 tweets to see what the most common "-ing" verbs were. Listed below are my findings: the 101 most common actions and the number of times they appeared in the 500,000 messages.

Some interesting observations: "going" beats "coming", "sitting" tops "standing", "listening" outranks "talking", "downloading" wins out over "uploading", and in the feel-good story of the year, "loving" (#53) reigns supreme over "fighting" (#93).

1.	going	8271
2.	watching	5248
3.	listening	4870
4.	getting	4694
5.	playing	4085
6.	working	3634
7.	trying	3599
8.	reading	3269
9.	waiting	2558
10.	looking	2487
11.	doing	2312
12.	having	2215
13.	being	2098
14.	thinking	2072
15.	wondering	1866
16.	eating	1862
17.	heading	1710
18.	feeling	1705
19.	making	1541
20.	meeting	1452
21.	sitting	1344
22.	observing	1300
23.	taking	1204
24.	using	1101
25.	drinking	1087
26.	writing	1079
27.	talking	1068
28.	coming	1042
29.	starting	997
30.	checking	943
31.	running	891
32.	shopping	865
33.	enjoying	800
34.	leaving	737
35.	testing	726
36.	cleaning	715
37.	sleeping	679
38.	wishing	668
39.	browsing	660
40.	driving	639
41.	buying	622
42.	updating	609
43.	hoping	587
44.	walking	561
45.	moving	554
46.	blogging	519
47.	catching	504
48.	packing	499
49.	twittering	496
50.	seeing	460
51.	hanging	427
52.	putting	424
53.	loving	415
54.	planning	413
55.	editing	406
56.	setting	403
57.	preparing	401
58.	finishing	394
59.	waking	393
60.	giving	389
61.	adding	388
62.	bookmarking	386
63.	living	383
64.	downloading	381
65.	posting	377
66.	calling	353
67.	learning	352
68.	installing	347
69.	training	336
70.	finding	322
71.	raining	322
72.	sending	321
73.	saying	315
74.	laughing	312
75.	alternating	310
76.	cooking	308
77.	relaxing	302
78.	uploading	299
79.	wearing	296
80.	killing	286
81.	considering	277
82.	showing	273
83.	wanting	262
84.	flying	258
85.	surfing	255
86.	contemplating	245
87.	chatting	244
88.	singing	238
89.	coding	236
90.	helping	234
91.	studying	231
92.	dancing	230
93.	fighting	227
94.	fixing	219
95.	riding	217
96.	realizing	215
97.	recording	213
98.	standing	212
99.	staying	210
100.	turning	209
101.	spending	207

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 6:00 am and is tagged with Nerd, Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Twitter: What are people doing?”

Marti Says:
September 7th, 2007 at 8:25 am

I am so happy to hear that "loving" made the list - I'm lovin' it! LOL! What a chore this must have been! Very interesting though - thanks for sharing!
Techfoot » Blog Archive » Action Verbs–Twitter Style Says:
September 9th, 2007 at 8:03 pm

[...] Twitter: What *are* people doing? :: Now I Have a Blog Too [...]
What are you doing? A seemingly innocuous question, but… think again. « Angela A Thomas Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 7:52 am

[...] Chris Finke did a twitter analysis of the verbs people used to reveal what they were doing and discovered the following top 20 verbs. 1. going 8271 2. watching 5248 3. listening 4870 4. getting 4694 5. playing 4085 6. working 3634 7. trying 3599 8. reading 3269 9. waiting 2558 10. looking 2487 11. doing 2312 12. having 2215 13. being 2098 14. thinking 2072 15. wondering 1866 16. eating 1862 17. heading 1710 18. feeling 1705 19. making 1541 20. meeting 1452 [...]
HIDIHO! » Blog Archive » twitter API Says:
August 7th, 2009 at 2:50 pm

[...] for more meaningful terms of search. I found a list of verbs that were used the most in tweets : http://www.chrisfinke.com/2007/07/10/twitter-what-are-people-doing/ it goes like: go watch listen get play work try read wait look do have be think wonder eat head [...]