Twitter: 40% babble, but what about the users?

On Monday, research carried out by Pear Analytics determined that 40% of all messages ("tweets") on Twitter are pointless babble. It doesn't say anything about the users though, but does give a rough indication of their personalities without any direct specifics.

Now this set me thinking. If I was to take a slice of Twitter pie and serve it on a shiny, clean plate, what ingredients would make up that pie? What would be in there - in shape, form and character? I came up with these five in my perspective of the worst kind of Twitter users.

1. The "has to be part of a wider circle of like-minded thinkers" user. These are the people who have to hashtag pretty much everything they write. #I #am #going #for #a #shower. Are you? That's gripping stuff there, but frankly I couldn't care less and you have missed the point of hashtags completely.
2. The "must tell the world how busy and important I am all the time in case they forget" user. The majority of Twitter users are no doubt busy people and it's understandable if they need to attend meetings. Some people work with the press and media and attend radio and television interviews. That's all good and well; sometimes it comes with the territory of the job you do. But when every other tweet includes your diary for the day, that gets tedious and makes you look pretentious and arrogant - two remarkably bad qualities for a person.
3. The "can't tweet without mentioning somebody" user. I'm sick to death of seeing tweets which consist of nothing other than literally a small handful of readable words and the rest are @other @users. Don't use Twitter as a mailing list. Use a mailing list.
4. The "link whore" user. I can understand when people such as myself or those in a similar position where they have work which they want to spread around the web. Twitter is a great tool for that. I have my blog entries automatically sent out over Twitter so I don't have to do it myself. But those who sign up to the service just to send out links to their followers, to me it's like a very short version of junk mail.
5. The "1s who cnt spk prprly n hv 2 cram as mch in as poss" user. We're quite aware that you can only send the maximum of a single text message - 160 characters - but it's not the hardest thing in the world to do. If you need more than that, send an email. If you have plenty of space spare, add a few vowels into your tweet for once.

On a similar note, CNN published the 12 most annoying types of Facebook users, which is definitely worth a read. I like to think I fit into the one who publishes far too much information.

What annoys you about Twitter? Got the need to name and shame? By all means, go ahead.