Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Leading university releases study on correlation between Twitter and babbling

Does an increase in the use of Twitter lead to an increase in Americans babbling incoherently?  After completing a $48.5 million federally funded research, doctors at John Hopkins University have noted an increase in their program's participants talking in short, Haiku-like sentences.  Dr. John Jones V, a researcher in the university's mental health department, said his research staff noted that program participants were reluctant at first to try Twitter, but after a couple of days, the program participants quickly learned how to compose messages and link blog sites to it. 

"When we took away their laptops or cell phones, some would stand around and speak in a special dialect," he said.  "We had to bring in linguistic researchers to capture all the new words being used."

Dr. Jones said the university will release a special Twitter dictionary of terms online.  The study is available at www.jhu.edu/gibberish.

(P.S.  Happy April Fools Day)

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