Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in The Science of ReTweets

Re: The Science of ReTweets

chris justice — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:51:31 -0000

Fantastic information that makes me want to work harder.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

brettbum — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:21:43 -0000

Is there a tool that will tell me my second level follower numbers? eg how many followers my followers have? Think LinkedIn network size

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Drover — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:57:37 -0000

Great article. Just wanted to say thanks and let you know I'm linking back to it from my forum.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Dr Bruce Hoag — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:45:34 -0000

A common mistake in statistics is to assume or imply that correlation is synonymous with cause. It is not. Just because two things are related does not mean that one caused the other. Another thing that is unclear is how many people were in the sample and how the sample was gathered. I know it seems as though I'm being unnecessarily picky; but the book, How to Lie with Statistics wasn't written for nothing.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

radiocitizen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:47:03 -0000

A great article full of useful insights - thanks!

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Replayzero — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:37:03 -0000

This is simply a brilliant post.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

stephenjoness — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:21:59 -0000

Thanks for all of the wonderful insights. I work with engineering faculty every day and they would have appreciated this scientific approach.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Lisa — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:04:19 -0000

So what the biggest (most reaching), fastest tweet/retweet ever?

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Kaña Cuban Coffee — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:19:59 -0000

Very well studied. Great post.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

drnedflanders — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:35:20 -0000

Greatinsight into Twitter marketing.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Andy Dawson (Blue Snapper) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:14:13 -0000

Dan, great info - thanks for sharing. Some of it will take me a while to
digest!

One point you didn't raise regarding 'ReTweetability' is the length of the
orginal Tweet.

That is: is there a correlation between Tweets below a certain character
count (that allow the addition of 'RT @TwitterName' without busting 140 chars)
and its ReTweetability?

I know that I've held off a RT if I have to amend the orginal Tweet to fit
the 140 chars.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

LaSandra Brill — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:59:10 -0000

This is AWESOME! Thanks for taking this time to disect the science of retweeting!

Re: The Science of ReTweets

asktonyc — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:48:40 -0000

Thanks for the terrific explanation of the science of retweets!

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Sean Slater — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:12:13 -0000

Dan, can you condense that to 140 characters for me? :)

Very interesting article. Thanks for the read.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Anne Marie — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:51:22 -0000

Great content! Thanks so much for your time invested in sharing such great info.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Tim Chambers — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:17:13 -0000

Great analysis. Would be even more useful if you linked to the Twitterers' user accounts. I'd like to be able to check out the streams of those who made your list.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Joseph Curran — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:28:49 -0000

This is a very interesting and complicated analysis of a complex system... It seems to give us data that is probably very usable to all of us and especially marketers... I for one am still trying wrap my head around all of it and see what it really means for me and how it can help me market myself and build a twitter presence... after all isn't that what most of us are trying to accomplish?? I find it very interesting that "please re-tweet" is all that some need to get a great deal of recognition. There are some interesting questions regarding large followers vs small roller groups, and false followers... a good question from Heather regarding, do people perceive people with large followers as not needing re-tweets??? This would make a heck of a Thesis... Thanks for the great work and analysis.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

sam — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:03:13 -0000

Can I just say it is for this article's reason that I find the world of web
marketing completely alien at many times. I was going to suggest a gender split
in those who find this interesting but then there are female comments above
so i cant blame it on that! If people could speak in "normal" speak then there
is definately a gap in the market :)

Re: The Science of ReTweets

jmedvm — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:44:19 -0000

Dear Dan, interesting analogies...I did neuroscience research a few careers ago,seems retweeting analysis does actually mimic the cellular level approach:once the concentration of ions reach a threshold value then the nerve cell propagating an action potential down it's length towards it's neighbor is an all or nothing response. Your analogy also works in a population analysis of interacting neurons in a network....it just depends if each tweet is an impulse,a cascading event or not . Is it single cell chemistry or a population study? Both seem valid and the subsequent analogies may take you to very different conclusions. Are twiterers like me with my iintimate 106 followers just a smaller network that follow same predictive models as large complicated people with few tweets yet many thousand followers?Maybe herd health analogies may also prove fruitful. Viewing tweets as a virus;how infective,penatratable in a population (public timeline or just own followers). Epidemiology may also help. The analogies really may help? Meanwhile,time of exposure vs numbers of virus particles plays a roll....just some thoughts.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Kristin — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:34:02 -0000

Being on the West Coast, I've found that logging into Twitter later in the day leaves my feed full of retweets. I've actually started unfollowing people who just retweet and have personal conversations all day, hoping to cut out the middle man. I'd also be interested in further anaylsis. Keep digging!

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Luc — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:30:28 -0000

Good insights in here, indeed. As a suggestion, though, I'd say you could look also into non-event related #hashtags.
Recently we got a whole night of discussion regarding the #parperfeito hashtag among brazilian twitterers, and is sprung out of a girl's comment on her own perfect date. what started as a single complaint in a twit later became topic for hours and hours, involving a significant amount of people. I'm quite confident that such occurences have also happened with something invented on the fly by someone outside of brazil as well, at least once.

cheers
luc

Re: The Science of ReTweets

jlazerus — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:51:41 -0000

Interesting study, but I don't understand a couple of things. What is a "seed" follower? Also, I'm concerned that people will take this as a "scientific" study when it's pretty apparent that there is no control, you haven't tried to disprove the thesis, etc. Is there a plan to do anything more thorough? Basically, you've proven that viral retweets get retweeted. Some commenters have mentioned the "psychology" involved. How can you test for that? Looking forward to more research, thanks!

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Tim Aldiss — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:33:15 -0000

This is the insight we have been waiting for. Despite some of the issues raised above it has become so evident that Twitter must be taken into account as a viable channel for influence and advocacy in marketing circles that statistical data to enrich an engagement metrics framework is long overdue. Nice one Mashable!

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Heather — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:12:01 -0000

Did you look at psychology behind retweeting and number of followers? For example, maybe people don't retweet people with thousands of followers because they assume most people will follow the "big names." Whereas a good tweet by someone with a smaller following may be new to your network.

Re: The Science of ReTweets

Patternhead — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:16:01 -0000

Thanks for the informative post.