Latest Articles

Made by Many and Used by High-Flyers

BA has launched a social site called Metrotwin.com which acts as a travel guide to New York and London.

Citizen Journalism Set For A Boost

With a new range of affordable digital camcorders hitting the shelves this week, NMK takes a closer look at the continuing rise of ‘citizen journalism’.

i-design 08 - 3D to 5D

The first panel discussion broached the topic of 5D, the developing area of immersive design that touches on themes around sensory experience, virtual reality environments and design that is not just digital and not just virtual, but rather a hybrid of the two.

• Online Advertising Bucks Flagging Market
• ITV’s Overlay Advertising Trial Panned
• More Web 2.0 Needed In Schools
• UK Council for Child Internet Safety Launches
• US Presidential Election Gets Social
• i-design 08 - Brendan Dawes, My Interactive
• i-design 08 - Simon Waterfall

Related Articles

• Made by Many and Used by High-Flyers

  BA has launched a social site called Metrotwin.com which acts as a travel guide to New York and London. more

• US Presidential Election Gets Social

  Last week, Twitter launched its US Presidential Election microblogging site and, with social media likely to play a big part in the outcome, politicians this side of the pond should be looking closely at its impact, experts say. more

• Parents Fear For Networked Kids

  Internet experts have called on social network sites to do more to protect children as a survey reveals that three-quarters (72 per cent) of parents spy on their children. more

• Marketers Cautious Over Social Media Spend

  Social media marketing has been high on the agenda for many communications experts. Most marketers can see how the Internet has revolutionised the way the general public communicates, but many are still unsure whether they can leverage this technology to push brand messages. more

• Brief encounter: Steve Pammenter, MD, WhiteLabelDating.com

  According to dating software company, WhiteLabelDating.com, having a relevant web site will always encourage relevant people to dip their hands into their pockets. We speak to Steve, Pammenter, managing director about profiting from niche. more

Related Events

Virtual Worlds Forum

When: October 6th, 2008
Location: The Bridge, Weston Street, London, SE1 The Bridge, SE1 Weston Street, London
Price: Reduced to £0.00 if you are eligible for a discount.

more



---

Social Media for Business

When: July 3rd, 2008
Location: University of Westminster
Price: £175.00 Reduced to £150.00 if you are eligible for a discount.

more



---

Advertisement

Why We Twitter

Bookmark this article with: Delicious Digg StumbleUpon

A new paper from Akshay Java, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin, and Belle Tseng at the University of Maryland aims to tackle one of the great existential mysteries of our time: the appeal of microblogging service Twitter.

The researchers analysed a total of 1,348,543 posts from 76,177 distinct users. Four common uses were identified, described as:

Daily Chatter Most posts on Twitter talk about daily routine or what people are currently doing. This is the largest and most common user of Twitter

Conversations In Twitter, since there is no direct way for people to comment or reply to their friend’s posts, early adopters started using the @ symbol followed by a username for replies. About one eighth of all posts
in the collection contain a conversation and this form of communication was used by almost 21% of users in the collection.

Sharing information/URLs About 13% of all the posts in the collection contain some URL in them. Due to the small character limit a URL shortening service like TinyURL is frequently used to make this feature feasible.

Reporting news Many users report latest news or comment about current events on Twitter. Some automated users or agents post updates like weather reports and new stories from RSS feeds. This is an interesting application of Twitter that has evolved due to easy access to the developer API.

The researchers also identified three types of Twitter user: the information source, who might post rarely, but amasses followers because of the perceived importance of what they say; friends, a broad category that ranges from co-workers to family members; and information gatherers, who post rarely themselves but follow other users regularly.

The research acknowledges that individuals might use the service with multiple intentions and thus also play multiple roles as users. The confusion and difficulties that might arise out of this leads the authors to suggest:

…we believe that the ability to categorize friends into groups (e.g. family, co-workers) would greatly benefit the adoption of microblogging platforms. In addition features that could help facilitate conversations and sharing news would be beneficial.