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Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research

Categories: MicroMedia, Social Media, Social Media Measurement, Web UsagePosted on December 8th, 2008

Left: The famed HP Labs think tank in Palo Alto.

A few months ago, I spent an entire day with the HP Labs group in Palo Alto, they’re responsible for the R&D and innovation that goes into their thousands of technology products on the market. I was pleased to see this deep dive scientific research on Twitter by Bernardo A. Huberman, Daniel M. Romero and Fang Wu.

You can read the free Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope (PDF). Written in an academic style, it’s a bit dense for the casual reader. I write for a business audience and I’ll strip out the most important findings, and add my own insight to what I think matters. As always you’re welcome to chime in the comments.

Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research:
If you just need a summary, I wrote this in a way that you can just read the bolded elements to get a sense of the report. I hope this saved you some time.

  • Most users have a smaller inner circle they communicate with: Within a social network, it was found that most only frequently communicate with a small segment of users –even if one has a large community. Makes sense, everyone has an ‘inner circle’. Finding the true network that an individual has (even if they have thousands of “friends”) is what’s really important. Although Scoble solicits imput from thousands of contacts, he leans on a smaller subset of folks to trust above all others.
  • HP Labs Sample Size is @ 6% of the Twittersphere: HP Labs took a random sample set of Twitter users, for a base of number of 309,740 users. According to my social network stats tracking page, Twitter’s total universe is somewhere between 4-5 million (still very small). I’ll value the network on the 5 mil side, so that’s sample size of about 6%, which is pretty healthy.
  • On average, most had 85 followers: They found that the average user has 85 followers in their network, this number seems reasonable when averaged out across the network.
  • On average, most had 80 friends: Most users followed back 80 others, which is close to the actual follower number. Perhaps some weren’t following spam bots, or people that follow everyone. James Governor has been discussing asymmetrical networks, but it appears that on the average, most are symmetrical.
  • Tweet Frequency? About one a day: On average, these users had posted 255 tweets, and since the average users has been around for nearly 7 months, thats about 36 tweets per month, or little bit over one a day.
  • 68%: are active users Social networking stats are almost always flawed, as the vendors don’t disclose how many are truly active. I define active user base as logged in and completed an activity in the last 30 days. Among the 309,740 users only 211,024 posted. It’s unknown if this filtered out spam tweets, although nearly 2/3rds of users have returned (site stickyness. That’s a pretty good return to site rate.
  • Most members have been on twitter nearly 7 months: The research showed that the average person (from first to last post) was active for 206 days. This means that June 2008 (report written in Dec) has become somewhat of a trigger point, perhaps where a growth curve started to point upwards. I noticed an influx of users on April 2008, two months before HPs findings, see comment #579
  • A quarter of tweets (@) are directed at other users: The report showed that Around 25.4% of all posts are directed, by using the “@user” which is responding to others. This could suggest that the other 75% of tweets are updating their network of what users think is interesting or discussing ‘what they are doing’
  • The more followers, the more they tweet –up until a point: Figure 1 indicates frequently in posting the more followers they have, right up until about 500 followers where the frequency starts to level out (if the graph were smoothed). The data around number of friends suggests a similar graph, although there’s no saturation point (see figure 2). I’ll suggest the more connections a user has, the more value they have, and therefore are more active.
  • Despite having large networks, a smaller circle is maintained: For users with a high number of followers, they actually only still communicate with a smaller subset of users. This rule remains constant see figure 4.
  • Where’s the value? within the hidden network: To find out the real value of a twitter user and their network, finding out their true network of folks they communicate with on a regular basis will show their trusted network. Finding out who the Scobles’ communicate with the most will determine will help find out how he is influenced.

    • Business Opportunity for Measurement Vendors
    If you’re a social media measurement company, and can find out the true influence model of who people really trust above all other users by looking at actual “@” behavior and follow behavior, be sure to leave a comment below showing how you can do this. Then, conducting this by topic, will find out the true influencers by market segment within the Twitterpshere.

    Brand Opportunity
    As we know, traditional advertising doesn’t work well in social networks, ‘carpet bombing’ isn’t effective. However, conversational marketing is also costly, as you have to spend great resources on labor to communicate with influencers. Therefore brands who want to be effective with their resources should find out who is an influencer in their market and focus their conversational marketing primarily on them.

    Thanks to the HP labs team who did a great report and really helped to further understanding Twitter better, when you have time, invite me over for lunch, I’m in the area.

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    This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 8:07 am and is filed under MicroMedia, Social Media, Social Media Measurement, Web Usage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    73 Responses to “Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research”

    « Older Comments

    1. [...] HP Labs has conducted research on twitter, I’ve highlighted the average number of followers, friends, tweets, and active user base. [...]



      2. Posted by Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008 on December 8th, 2008 at 8:20 am

    2. i guess i’m an abnormal user. i started late but i am constantly updating. most of the people i follow and/or am followed by i have never met in real life. none of my real friends would bother with it, i don’t think.



      3. Posted by cwylie0 on December 8th, 2008 at 8:22 am

    3. This post is really helpful, since I’m a newbie to Twitter and learning its value day by day. I’m also interested in personality types and job industry distributions across Twitter. It seems the extroverts seem to tweet about themselves and introverts about links. But both also tweet ideas, and I like that crucible for ideas. Also seems to attract self-taught techies, Mkt/Adv gurus, and those who consider technology a part of their lives. Anyway, thanks again, and I look forward to learning more.



      4. Posted by Steven Weathers on December 8th, 2008 at 8:26 am

    4. About the branding part.. that’s in a sense WOM and originating from influencers. However, the up ramp labor is not low either to find those influencers and woo them and keep them onboard. One way could be tracking the discussion forums that these influencers attend.. and also follow people who make comments to their posts.

      http://twitter.com/pinakis



      5. Posted by Evolvingwheel on December 8th, 2008 at 8:26 am

    5. Jeremiah - thanks for an interesting post, but what does it mean in terms of Twitter activity for business right now? As a PR agency immersing ourselves in social media, it has become very useful to keep in touch with what’s innovative and interesting.
      But recently, when devising client proposals, we’ve put in and subsequently taken out Twitter ideas because the justification for using the platform just wasn’t strong enough.
      Is it too soon for Twitter to deliver real benefits to campaigns?



      6. Posted by Jon Clements on December 8th, 2008 at 8:31 am

    6. “Twitter’s total universe is somewhere between 4-5 million (still very small).”

      4 to 5 million is anything but “very small”. (especially to turn right around and call a measly 6% a “pretty healthy … sample size”. perhaps I misunderstood… if not, yowza, that line irks me. but anyway…)

      The fact that Twitter is even being researched in such a fashion is one of many-a testament to it’s impact outside of the grim throng of early-adopters (aka, the “very small” group of Twitter users who think they are the “only” twitter users or that they somehow “made” Twitter popular… you know who you are…) But that won’t prevent the inevitable follow-up by this mob from being rife with elitism, self-importance, and downright hot air.

      Save the aforementioned problem with some early verbiage I think you hit on some really key abstracts. I especially appreciate the remark about: “Brand Opportunity” (which falls in line with “Find the hidden network” … that’s all great advice … even though it draws an example from such an “outlier” as Bob Scoble… ;) hehehe.



      7. Posted by matt on December 8th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    7. Very interesting post Jeremiah, I come to a similar conclusion about the opportunity for a measurement business model in my article here: http://experiencecurve.com/archives/why-mlm-will-kill-twitter-hint-because-they-have-a-business-model

      @Jon Clements read the article I posted because in that I provide a solid measurement model for measuring Twitter’s effectiveness at driving action. I used the Kmart idea and said anyone that retweeted my message would be entered to win a one of ten $25 threadless gift certificates. I sent that out to my 1,800 followers and it got rebroadcast over 500 times, and is still echoing now :-) Now take http://twitter.com/kevinrose who has 77,000 followers and do a competition to win an iphone based on RT and you might crash twitter.



      8. Posted by Karl Long on December 8th, 2008 at 8:57 am

    8. Twitter is simple, but powerful. “Less is more,” really applies in this case.

      As of right now I have 104 followers, I am following 46, and I have posted 724 tweets!

      If you are wondering how businesses can use Twitter, check out my latest blogpost about CheapTweet.

      Another way that businesses are using Twitter is to see what average people are saying about their products. Then using this information to improve their products or advertising campaigns. Not a bad idea.



      9. Posted by Joshua of Catholic Tech Tips on December 8th, 2008 at 9:06 am

    9. Not sure I agree with the linearity of this line of thinking regarding “influentials.”

      (a) I am not sure twitter network analysis is superior to real world testing that measures business results, e.g., who gets the most traffic. In a sense, the many gift card giveaways that are all over twitter (e.g., Walmart engaging 11 bloggers who also tweet) provides comparative data as to which of them is more productive.

      (b) Influencers and platforms are two different entry points; this should be a study of how influencers build social media influence, not just how they build it on twitter.

      Business wants to identify influencers. Twitter is a component of building influence for some people. I think the approach should be more comprehensive. Not every influencer will be on twitter (e.g., Seth Godin) or even a heavy user (e.g., Anita Campbell).

      Also, important to distinguish “household word” v. “niche” influencers. The question depends on who is asking the question and who they are trying to influence.



      10. Posted by Susan Kuhn Frost on December 8th, 2008 at 9:06 am

    10. This is a great write-up, thanks Jeremiah. The one statistic which I think may be the hardest to accurately measure, is the following/follower ratio and what type of priorities that implies for the Twitter community. First you have the proliferation of ‘auto-follow’ tools. Add to that the fact that many people try going the auto-follow route, then decide it’s not for them, and stop doing it.

      Then there’s differing philosophies about whether or not you should follow everyone who follows you as a courtesy or whether it is desirable to achieve a certain ratio of follows to followers. I’ve come across a number of Twitter users who believe that ideally you should be following far fewer people than follow you in order to create some sort of reputation. Some even use a 2:1 ratio as their goal.

      Seems like that particular metric is the target which moves the most for this study.



      11. Posted by Derek on December 8th, 2008 at 9:08 am

    11. Social relationships are built on trust, manners and common interests - and so are twitter relationships.

      It’s not a tool of marketing, it *may* be a tool of discussion marketing for some - any excessive marketing oriented abuse will be spotted and naturally put aside.

      More comments in my post - Twitter and manners that matter: ttp://italiaotoko.blogspot.com/2008/12/thoughts-on-twitter-manners-that-matter.html



      12. Posted by Francesco Romano - aka Italiaotoko on December 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    12. @Susan Kuhn Frost

      You are absolutely on the point.. it has to be an integrated approach. However, Twitter can be cross- platform integrated with one’s profile signatures whether Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, or whoever.

      Twitter being a micro-blog tool, it may not be descriptive by itself.. however it can be referenced through objective conversations that happen across all other profile signatures. That’s where API pool will come into play. Just the way how other tech evolves on the growth curve.. next will be when developers are all crazy and developing hundreds of apps that will connect twitter to emails, vlogs, and what not.

      I will keep my eyes open for how Twitter apps come to the surface as more eyeballs gather around it.

      For the 2.0 PR community, it will be mission critical to track ways that Twitter as a service is finding its place in the daily communication channels of the influencers. Also depends how tech savvy these influencers are to absorb these open services into their existing routine.



      13. Posted by Evolvingwheel on December 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    13. matt

      I’m not sure I follow your comments. Twittersphere of 5 mil is small compared to Facebook and MySpace who have over 100 mil.

      Regardless, a 6% sample size of nearly any social network is still a good sample, make sense?

      Scoble is an outlier, that’s my point, would you mind trying to read the post again, then let me know if you still have questions. Let me know if I need to clarify something more.

      Thanks.



      14. Posted by jeremiah_owyang on December 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    14. A clarification question on your strategy of identifying influentials, Jeremy:

      Is your point that just broadcasting micro-posts — even pithy, personal, relevant, frequent and well-written ones — isn’t sufficient to build a brand, and that a business needs to ‘reply to’ users also? But that, since replying to lots of people is expensive, they should focus on those most influential users?

      Two questions:

      1. Are we sure that broadcasting doesn’t work, at least, somewhat? Blogs where the blogger doesn’t respond in the comments are quite common, and many are very popular.
      2. Can a business afford not to reply to customers and/or potential customers, anyway?

      Sorry if these are obvious…



      15. Posted by Jonathan on December 8th, 2008 at 9:54 am

    15. This is very timely information for me. Thank you for posting about this study.



      16. Posted by Liz on December 8th, 2008 at 10:05 am

    16. One thing is clear, big business is asking questions and we need to be prepared with answers. Companies are still trying to figure out what a website is for, but they know they need one.

      If you are consulting in social media you better have a recommendation on why your clients should or shouldn’t use Twitter.

      Thanks J for the summary and highlighting the key points, instead of stripping them out ;)



      17. Posted by Michael Daehn on December 8th, 2008 at 10:12 am

    17. Thx for the time to make a summary AND link to the full post.

      It’s nice to see some more “academic” research popping up about social media. Not much to find about it, but always provides very interesting perspectives.

      http://twitter.com/Adgenius



      18. Posted by Rob van Alphen on December 8th, 2008 at 10:24 am

    18. [...] you even get started, you might want to know more about who is using Twitter and how are they using it. Jeremiah Owyang has decoded HP Lab’s Twitter research for [...]



      19. Posted by Measuring Twitter: Marketing, Conversations and Individuals | Real Estate Internet Marketing by Union Street Media on December 8th, 2008 at 10:32 am

    19. [...] take up roughly 1/4 of all tweets on Twitter. In the last post, I said that variety is key to a successful Twitter [...]



      20. Posted by Printer Tweet 5: Reply to This Tweet | Magicomm Blog on December 8th, 2008 at 11:02 am

    20. This reminds me of a study that I read about (I think it was HP Labs) that tracked emails for internal projects and identified who was actually leading them. Couldn’t find a link to the study (extra points to anyone who finds it), but very interesting stuff.

      Michael B.
      http://twitter.com/michaelbiven



      21. Posted by Michael Biven on December 8th, 2008 at 11:17 am

    21. Facebook now claims “more than 130 million active users,” so yes, Twitter’s universe in terms of social networks is “very small.” The remark about healthy sample size refers to statistical significance, not social networking. Twitter’s 3 million probably reach 30 million, since so many have extended networks, are bloggers and are also reposting links elsewhere.



      22. Posted by joel on December 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am

    22. Although HP Labs does equate 2-way Twitter connections with value — an unproven notion from a marketing or PR perspective — that’s not exactly what the data showed. For one thing, the study showed a correlation between posting volume and number of friends. HP seems to say “value” is based on the assumption that 2-way communication implies passalong. But how do they know ideas actually pass? And are they underappreciating the value of Twitter broadcasting?

      The quote is:

      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…

      Finding someone with a lot of “real” friends might cut the effort of IDing and influencing real influencers or connectors.



      23. Posted by David Card on December 8th, 2008 at 11:51 am

    23. Jeremiah

      Thanks for this. I help run a services company and am trying to get understand how Twitter can help us (or just be another distraction). You’ve clarified some key things for us with minimal time investment. Appreciate it!



      24. Posted by Anne on December 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am

    24. @ David Card

      Twitter will soon offer the notion of friends and groups http://is.gd/abzQ , so identifying these real influencers may be easier.



      25. Posted by Derek on December 8th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    25. Most of my inner circle isn’t on Twitter though!



      26. Posted by richandcreamy on December 8th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    26. Wow ! I would never have thought this was possible - “75% of tweets are updating their network of what users think is interesting or discussing ‘what they are doing’”

      Thanks for the insight into the HP study.

      Shashi



      27. Posted by Shashi Bellamkonda on December 8th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    27. I find it very interesting that a prestigious outfit as HP will spend the time and expense on doing such an n in-depth study on twitter. Might be an indicator of what is to come….I started using twitter in August or July after I attended the New Media Expo. For me the other things like Youtube etc seemed to time consuming for me. I am certainly a below average user but from what I see this type of application could be a tremendous tool for businesses in terms of market research and as many do just blatant self promotion. I am surprised that none of the big boys have copied twitter yet. Imagine next election hearing an announcement “Log on to twitter to cast your vote” unofficially of course :-)



      28. Posted by Oak on December 8th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    28. I think the data showing that asymmetrical networks are not the norm is the most fascinating and shows the difference in usage between the majority of users and the social core.



      29. Posted by Ed on December 8th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    29. Hmmm

      So, most people talk more to their core group than they do to people they barely know. The way to use this as a marketing platform is to communicate with the Twitter Elite who have the largest circles of influence.

      And they spent a lot of time and money on this research.

      Just about every social media “guru” in the business has already explained this (all of it being pretty logical and obvious) … if it is too costly to market directly on social networks because of the time/money ratio…how cost effective is doing an exhaustive think-tank study of the same network?

      Not trying to be sarcastic, but man…unless there is a lot more to it than this, they could have hired a few high school grads to tweet for a couple of weeks and gotten the gist of all this.

      DNW



      30. Posted by David Wilson on December 8th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    30. David

      Yes, I agree, we knew a lot of this intuitively, but now it’s backed by research and data.

      Brands, marketers, companies, base their investments off logic, and research helps them to be more confident.

      I assure you, having research on your boss’s desk makes up a more powerful ar argument guement when funding is getting slashed during an economic downturn.



      31. Posted by jeremiah_owyang on December 8th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    31. [...] Jeremiah Owyang writes about HP Lab’s Twitter Research. He summaries the HP paper Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope (PDF). Good stuff. [...]



      32. Posted by Cloudy Thinking » Blog Archive » Jeremiah Owyang on HP Lab’s Twitter Research on December 8th, 2008 at 1:44 pm

    32. [...] an interesting analysis of some research conducted by HP Labs on [...]



      33. Posted by Canadian Business Blog » Blog Archive » More on Twitter on December 8th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    33. taximike new to twitter and new to new media.My perception is that nothing is new.big tweets eating small tweets



      34. Posted by michael on December 8th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    34. [...] do you compare with other Twitter users? Jeremiah Owyang brings out some very interesting stats from HP Lab’s research on Twitter [...]



      35. Posted by Five in the Morning 120908 « StickyFigure on December 8th, 2008 at 3:42 pm

    35. [...] Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research (tags: business networking twitter analysis socialmedia statistics marketing) [...]



      36. Posted by links for 2008-12-08 « Donghai Ma on December 8th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

    36. Hi Jeremiah, another great post. But I don’t agree with “Most users have a smaller inner circle they communicate with.”

      I’ve been on Twitter for a while now and yes, as you create your network, you have a small inner circle. But as soon as you add a Twitter app on your phone, a client on your computer and play with Twitter Search, users find different circles that in many cases will never overlap.

      I follow 1,200 people but I have at least 10 different “inner circles.” By city (Miami, Bend, San Francisco, New York, Colombia) by industry (technology, newspaper, previous job, current job) etc.

      Thanks, @SocialJulio



      37. Posted by @SocialJulio on December 8th, 2008 at 11:41 pm

    37. [...] in private beta, headup adds more Yahoo! goodness WebStrategy: Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research Heather Clancy: IBM and Harvard applying tech grid ideas to solar grid research project Sam Diaz: [...]



      38. Posted by Between the Lines mobile edition on December 9th, 2008 at 3:11 am

    38. Great post/insights, many thanks!

      I am one of those described above (or worst), as I created the account in April07, and started re-using it Nov/Dec08!

      Personal view: I think Twitter will not be mainstream until:

      1.) It provide better privacy protection

      (not everyone want to ‘blog’ nor share the innermost secrets (within reasons), so, I have to use a ‘public’ profile and friends will have to follow me on my private & protected feed)

      2.) groups

      At present, even with help of TweekDeck, it is still too many tweets and no easy way of managing all the information

      3.) better computer/mobile client

      it will need more ‘integrated’ approach, as yes, it has 6+million users, but they have to rely on various ‘hacks’ or 3rd party clients to view/track/comment/re-tweet.. its too geeky (not that I am not.. but I am not joe blog the mass market..

      and only when there is a more seamless client that the brand can really leverage/track/invest in using the channel to approach the market.

      Lets face it, the brand/media/FMCG leaders are just starting to understand online (limited mobile)..

      BR
      Gareth

      twitter: @garethwong



      39. Posted by gareth wong on December 9th, 2008 at 5:37 am

    39. [...] Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research http://speaking.alltop.com/ (tags: twitter strategy) No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> [...]



      40. Posted by links for 2008-12-09 « The social media revolution (in 15 minutes) on December 9th, 2008 at 6:02 am

    40. Thank you so much for the insights and alerting us to the article. “Dense” is good. The loose tie to your post created by some search tools allows time to read the article. I’m not sure that a tweet would have achieved the same results.
      Aloha,
      Dan



      41. Posted by Dan Smith on December 9th, 2008 at 9:14 am

    41. [...] Twitter under the microscope” by Huberman, Romero and Wu (see also Jeremiah Owyang’s summary) is: the number of people you follow on Twitter is not the whole truth. It’s more interesting [...]



      42. Posted by Networks that matter on Twitter: the @-Crowd < life under electronic conditions on December 10th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    42. [...] Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research [...]



      43. Posted by renaissance chambara | Ged Carroll - Links of the day on December 10th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    43. Certainly

      I favor a mash-up of platforms and messages. Using a blend of social networking tools with informal messages to new and old friends, sprinkled with a judicious bit of business development that adds value works just fine. After all, isn’t that what people do at parties?

      Give the economic times; combining messages, people, offerings and even industries can be a super way to prosper. My friend Jon wrote a cool series of pieces on corporate mash-ups positing Exxon bailout GM. A worthwhile read at http://www.touchmarketingblog.com/.



      44. Posted by Howard on December 11th, 2008 at 8:21 am

    44. The “hidden network” of people you are replying to is only one part of the story. There’s also another, maybe even more hidden network of those people who are replying to you most often. I hacked together a tool to show both sides: http://metaroll.de/relevantnet.php

      I don’t quite agree with the notion of a “sparse” hidden network. I calculated my hidden network and it doesn’t look like the sparse network in the paper at all. Actually it’s a quite dense social network.



      45. Posted by Benedikt on December 11th, 2008 at 12:30 pm

    45. [...] to Jeremiah Owyang’s calculations, about 68% of Twitter users are active (have had some kind of activity in the [...]



      46. Posted by Twitter stats and starting your own corporate Twitter account — Archive — RD2 Blog on December 11th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    46. [...] (from the study) - 309740 users (this sample is 6% of the twitter universe, info courtesy Jeremiah’s post, the comments on the post are also very interesting), who on an average posted 255 posts, had 85 [...]



      47. Posted by @ the friends within followers | brants on December 11th, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    47. [...] Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research [...]



      48. Posted by 博客士 » Blog Archive » 每日关注 [2008-12-12]:ahgua @ del.icio.us on December 12th, 2008 at 9:46 am

    48. [...] If you’d like to replicate this for yourself, I’d be happy to share the script with you.  E-mail msbernst@mit.edu.  Also related: HP’s study of Twitter; here in plainer English. [...]



      49. Posted by UID Teatime Blog » Facebook status updates: an informal study on December 13th, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    49. [...] recently posed the question  - in response to Jeremiah Owyang’s blog post on HP Labs’ Twitter research - about how businesses could work with Twitter, as we have pulled Twitter-based ideas from PR [...]



      50. Posted by All of a Twitter » pr-media-blog.co.uk on December 16th, 2008 at 5:08 am

    50. [...] recent HP Labs research paper about Twitter (hat tip to Jeremiah Owyang) claims that “the number of people a user actually communicates with ['friends'] eventually [...]



      51. Posted by Why I’m Qwitting You On Twitter | OnlineMarketerBlog.com on December 16th, 2008 at 5:55 am

    51. [...] Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research [...]



      52. Posted by Getting help, growing networks: Twitter | AccMan on December 16th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    52. As always, good stuff.



      53. Posted by Matt on December 17th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    53. [...] Owyang recently wrote a nice round-up of research conducted by HP Labs about Twitter, tweets and the tweeters who send [...]



      54. Posted by | Digital Pivot on December 18th, 2008 at 5:03 am

    54. I just started twittering again and this is very timely. It validates what I’ve been hearing.
      Thanks



      55. Posted by Small Business Marketing on December 20th, 2008 at 10:39 pm

    55. [...] see: Om Malik, Jeremish Owyang, Greg [...]



      56. Posted by A New Approach To Twitter Friendship and Influence | Gauravonomics Blog on December 29th, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    56. [...] ‘friend’ an ongoing challenge. Consistent with HP’s Twitter Research quoted in Jeremiah Wang’s blog, my coping strategy on Twitter, has been to relate with ‘friends’, in [...]



      57. Posted by 10 Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media « La Marguerite on January 2nd, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    57. This is a great study and reinforces what we have been building. Some folks above mention blasting offers but I am not sure that is the right approach.

      As an alternative, JetBlue has 17% of their followers in the NYC metro market. Isn’t that valuable?

      We have a tool that gives you the demographics of your followers and their reach so you can understand the “who” of your followers. This allows a brand marketer to think more strategically about how they communicate in this channel. We basically give clients their followers in an excel file to then manipulate. It is still a work in progress but at least you aren’t flying blind or spamming on Twitter.



      58. Posted by Costa on January 4th, 2009 at 10:53 pm

    58. [...] If you’d prefer just reading an executive summary, Jeremiah Owyang lists the main points of the paper and breaks down what it means for a business audi…. [...]



      59. Posted by Paper on Twitter | Population of One on January 6th, 2009 at 7:12 am

    59. Would be interesting to know Tweet Frequency in other terms than median average of tweets/days a member. Too bad can’t have the average of tweets/days - to see on the days that someone tweets, on average how many tweets do they send? Then also get the ratio between days tweeted and days not tweeted.



      60. Posted by jadekaz on January 6th, 2009 at 11:24 am

    60. Great study and excellent job on the layman’s extract. I’m doing a lot of informal research on this to get my head around things (I’m a new twitter user) and I seem to be finding my niche just fine. What I want to be able to do now is articulate how it works for me and why because what I see working for me and the reasons why is frequently against the majority of the opinions/trends of other Twitter users. Not always or radically different, but certainly different. Maybe the tides are changing as the system is used by more people and features/functions evolve. Interesting times.

      -dw
      (@Wion)



      61. Posted by Destry Wion on January 12th, 2009 at 5:57 pm

    61. Oh, and you’re right on the money with your reply to David in comment #30. The data is much more powerful to back the logic.



      62. Posted by Destry Wion on January 12th, 2009 at 6:01 pm

    62. [...] of the Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade in June 2007. These days Twitter is pretty big, with some people estimating about 5 million users, even the PM has been seen to use Twitter, and there are some pretty good features that it [...]



      63. Posted by Andrew E. Scott » How I stopped loving Twitter and embraced Facebook on January 14th, 2009 at 5:22 am

    63. [...] Twitter research. Credit goes to Bernardo A. Huberman, Daniel M. Romero and Fang Wu for this work. Here’s the link. You can download the PDF if you want the full, academic piece. Or the keys points are bulleted on [...]



      64. Posted by HP Lab’s Twitter Research - The Highlights | ReubenRock.com on January 20th, 2009 at 7:08 am

    64. [...] others more than them. So, I’ll average it around 5mm total registered users. I trust the HP labs research on Twitter (met with Bernardo two weeks ago) and their data from a significant sample size shows that only 68% [...]



      65. Posted by Twitter’s Valuation, $73.52 an Active User? on January 25th, 2009 at 8:01 am

    65. [...] I can admit is yes, I have a close circle of friends in Twitter. Just like this theory proves. Face it, I can’t engage with all of my friends all at once. I usually interact my the [...]



      66. Posted by On Twitter Friends | Patpat Life Notes on January 26th, 2009 at 6:39 am

    66. Hi, I read the research paper of HP and the method they define a “friends” may need more discussion.



      67. Posted by Jinqiu Currency on January 28th, 2009 at 4:08 am

    67. [...] It matters for understanding key groups of people.  Partly this is shaped by who is using Twitter as part of their natural communications.  You can now gain access to the fleeting thoughts of the famous or the perceived/debated influentials - Click here to see Barack Obama’s tweets. Click here to see the self described influential moms network and how this natural community are using Twitter. Another key segment is youth, and Mobile youth released some results in December. There is an uptake in Twitter usage by young people (similar patters to SMS, and under 25’s now constitute 25% of new users). Mobile Youth classify it as confined to early adopters (but given the increased importance on influentials - then this group are still key). Similar to blog statistics - Japanese youth have rapidly adopted twitter into their daily social activities. Click for Mobile Youth’s post here.. Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester has posted about HP’s research into how people are using Twitter here. [...]



      68. Posted by Why Twitter matters for qualitative researchers | kumeugirl.com on February 8th, 2009 at 7:47 am

    68. [...] microscope I’ve already covered the highlights for the business person for Bernardo’s Twitter report, or you can access the PDF [...]



      69. Posted by Reports to Read from HP’s Social Computing Lab on February 8th, 2009 at 10:35 pm

    69. [...] Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research - A few months ago, I spent an entire day with the HP Labs group in Palo Alto, they’re responsible for the R&D and innovation that goes into their thousands of technology products on the market. I was pleased to see this deep dive scientific research on Twitter by Bernardo A. Huberman, Daniel M. Romero and Fang Wu. [...]



      70. Posted by   Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research by Ted Eytan, MD on February 18th, 2009 at 6:08 am

    70. Late to the game on this. I started to comment but it became it’s own beast.

      Great comments here, and Jeremiah your coverage sets the bar for clarity and organization.

      I picked up on the social stuff that’s immeasurable:

      http://www.gravity7.com/blog/media/2009/02/attention-and-inattention-on-twitter.html



      71. Posted by Adrian Chan on February 24th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    71. These days, there seem to be a lot more social websites folding than flourishing.



      72. Posted by Miami Web Designer on March 7th, 2009 at 9:22 am

    72. [...] HP har gjort en undersökning på amerikanska Twitter-användare (undersökningen gjordes sent 2008 på 6%och ur de materialet kan man slå fast några saker, vilket gorts bäst av Jeremiah Owyang: [...]



      73. Posted by Känner vi varandra? « Brand Spider on April 9th, 2009 at 7:14 am

    73. [...] For general information on social networking sites, check out A Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009 by Jeremiah Owyang. Owyang also also provides a kind of executive summary cum business strategy reading of Huberman, Romero and Wu (2009, below) at Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research. [...]



      74. Posted by Fear of Twitter: technophobia part 2 « Neuroanthropology on April 14th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
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