Research: Twitter to Blame for Economic Woes

According to deathbyemail.com, research by a Harvard economist indicates that Twitter may be to blame for the recent economic woes being experienced worldwide.

Professor Martin Schmeldon of Harvard Business School recently released research findings that suggest excessive Twitter use may have caused the current economic downturn.

“We see the rapid rise of Twitter usage in 2008 correlating very strongly with a tremendous decrease in American productivity,” said Schmeldon. “Our regression analysis on the data suggests a causal relationship that may actually be larger than the impact of the much-touted subprime collateral debt refinancing triggers.”

We here at Performancing believe otherwise. Twitter definitely helps increase productivity. Where else do we get story leads? And Twitter is part of our social media marketing. (And guess where I found this nifty little piece of economic analysis).

And besides, my econometrics professor back in my undergraduate days had always stressed the point that correlation does not mean causality. This makes me think: it’s also possible that the supposed correlation also goes the other way around. Maybe with the Dow going down, people are flocking more and more to Twitter (to find other sources of income, perhaps?).

Is it April 1st yet?

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Comments

  1. Gugel says:

    Correlation does not equal causation. WTF “Professor” Schmeldon.

  2. Hey, This post is pretty funny… it’s meant to be, right? I mean, McDonald’s stock rose during 2008 also, so should they step up and take their share of the blame for the recession?

  3. I am currently enjoying Freakonomics, and one thing which is rammed home is that corrolation does not mean causality. Surely you could skew this and say that unemployment is rising, therefore people being fired and made redundent are actually causing the economic downturn, not the other way around. Ridiculous, but as ridiculous saying that Twitter is causing the downturn.

  4. rick.my says:

    I’m no professor, but I can surely tell that social web app like tweeter does not have anything to do with economic performance. Worldwide? That prof is joking.

  5. A good April Fools spoof, what a joke!
    Lauren Reagan

  6. Anonymous says:

    This has to be a joke, if this is the caliber of “Professor” at Harvard now I think there reputation is about to take a dive.

  7. wow that is reallt funny, it causes me to laugh deep down, I guess the people can not find any researches to be done then they are inventing ones.
    Later we willl listen that the increase in global warming, is due to a chicken fight a harvard

  8. eko says:

    good this post

  9. ????? says:

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