A new study into Twitter brings its effectiveness for promoting products and ideas into question.

It’s hard to go a day without hearing some expert, the media, or somebody you know rave about Twitter. Wave after wave of Twitter experts have emerged out of thin air and suddenly if you’re not sending out ten tweets a day, you are doing your company a disservice.

Unfortunately, according to new research by LinkedIn Research Network and Harris Interactive, Twitter might not be the gold mine people think it is. A better analogy might be to the gold rush of the 1800s. A few people did find gold, but everyone else was stuck with a pickaxe and a few gold flakes.

According to the research, only 31% of U.S. web users were familiar with Twitter compared to 83% of advertisers. Additionally, only 8% of both groups felt that promoting products and ideas with Twitter was “very effective.” A far greater number of advertisers, 50%, felt that Twitter was “somewhat effective” compared to 42% of internet users who believed the same. The rest of the respondents felt that promoting with Twitter was “not that effective” or “not at all effective.”

This research tells us that while Twitter might have some effect; it’s probably too soon to throw all of your resources into it. It’s certainly not a bad social network to look into, but until it has a larger following among the web population it’s not likely to be your biggest profit maker.