Twitter research says: friends are more important than followers

An analysis by Taly Weiss (of Trendspotting) on Twitter user behavior examines the social saturation and the saturation of content, as well as the Reciprocity of exchanges between users. For anyone who is looking into using Twitter, this might be an interesting read.

Here are the main take-aways:

1. Twitter users have a very small number of friends compared to the number of followers and followees they declare. This implies the existence of two different networks: a very dense one made up of followers and followees, and a sparser and simpler network of actual friends. The latter proves to be a more influential network in driving Twitter usage since users with many actual friends tend to post more updates than users with few actual friends. On the other hand, users with many followers or followees post updates more infrequently than those with few followers or followees.

2. A link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them. In the case of Twitter, most of the links declared within Twitter were meaningless from an interaction point of view.

Planners who twitter

Looking to connect to planners on twitter?

Misentropy put together a list.

http://www.misentropy.com/planners-who-twitter.html

Also I really enjoy his series “1o Things I didn’t know until last week”. What a great idea.

Twittergarchy (The rule of those who twitter)

In the times of the oh-so-empowered “Prosumer” user-generated outcries over companies, brands and their sometimes inane advertising has been the domain of blogs, forums and review sites. Now, first reports come in that the chatty monosyllabic twitter crowd has also made some forays into user-generated consumer advocacy, or, shall we say, advertising-related hate tweets. Case in point: Motrin’s mom-alogue video.

Is this a case of trendspotting gone wrong? Yeah, the baby wearing thing is a trend and forums are agog with mothers discussing it. However, trying to usurp that trend is apparently another story.

I personally think the whole thing is a stretch conceptually, but regardless of that, I can see how some moms, especially those who are supposed to be relevant as an audience, might take offense, or at least, write it off as insipid marketing hu-ha. How convenient that you don’t even need a blog anymore to rant, but instead, you can micro-blog the bejesus out of brands: it’s even faster feedback that brands have to deal with now. Result for Motrin: the twitter outrage made it into the TOP 5 of google search results when you search for Motrin.

It’s time brands developed a fall-back plan for failed ad ideas that are getting ripped apart by the blogosphere, and recently, the micro-blogosphere, or, actually, have something relevant to say instead of straddling this or the other trend, just because for lack of better ideas.

Honey, it’s our song…

Finally a real song for all us digital natives and immigrants.. It even has a refrain. Enjoy!

via Toad Stool

Corporations and the use of Twitter

Have no real time to make this a proper entry, as I have to get packing for 3 weeks of travelling, but I wanted to share this interesting article on the surge of corporations’ use Twitter as a customer service surveillance tool, as well as to boost brand perception in the favor of transparency, as reported by Businessweek.

via http://twitter.com/Armano