The characteristics of Twitter use

Psyblog has put together a list of 10 findings from research on Twitter users' behaviour. Despite describing Twitter, rather nicely, as like being at a party and having several conversations with people at one time, he concludes that Twitter is 'less social' than other social networks, demanding less personal information from users, and exhibiting less reciprocation in followers/following and also in responses to tweets.

One element of this non-reciprocity is the following celebrities have. But they're not the only people with large followings. Others 'earn' their following by tweeting interestingly. Psyblog continues: "Occasionally, though, some manage the trick of being famous and quite interesting, e.g. Stephen Fry". Agreed. (Note Psyblog doesn't mention recent research by HP labs showing that number of followers isn't an index of influence on Twitter; that's determined by how much an individual is retweeted.)

Psyblog also points to the Pulse of the Nation analysis and visualisation of the mood content of 300 million American Tweets, carried out by computer scientists at North Eastern University and Harvard Medical School, which shows, so eloquently, changes in mood with time of day and day of the week.

[Psyblog article via Mindhacks; HP research via ReadWriteWeb]