Akshay Java, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin, Belle Tseng. “Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”. http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf. Accessed 31 Aug. 2017.
Summary
In “Why we Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”, the researchers explore microblogging sites, focusing on twitter in particular. They collected data on hubs and authorities, the impact of the geographical locations of users, and the relationships users form with other users. They looked at the motivation behind why people post. They researched who people followed based on their geographical location.
Overall they made some general conclusions. The people who communicate across the globe typically speak with other people who speak the same language. They found that there were 3 categories of relationships: information sharing, information seeking, and friendship. They found that the main reason people use Twitter is to post about their daily life activities.
Reflection
As someone who is not familiar with twitter I thought it was interesting that the most common thing people do is posting about the trivial things they do on a daily basis. I was also unaware that it’s used for information sharing. I find it surprising that people seek knowledge on microblogging websites where the user is so limited in how much they can write.
I wish the researchers had expanded a little more on their conclusion. They mention briefly at the end about how twitter should create more specific communities for family or co-workers but I think it would’ve been interesting to learn more about the relationships between the users in the different categories they established. Like why people feel the need to follow so many people when the relationship isn’t being reciprocated and how these relationships affect the user outside of twitter. For instance, do the people the user follows have an effect on the user’s own posts?
Questions
- What are the main types of information being shared in microblogging (i.e. gaming was mentioned)?
- What makes Twitter different than other microblogging websites?
- Other than a common language, are there other factors that determine friends/followers based on geographical location?
- Would doing a similar analysis on a non-microblogging website such as Facebook reveal drastically different results in terms of motivation for posting and relationships?
- What makes a user keep using Twitter once they start?
