the following diagram depicts the connections between twitter users who sent tweets containin the words [miss california] between approx 3:05 EST and 3:11 EST on tuesday may 12, 2009.
this diagram depicts a low degree of connectedness among this group of tweeters.
we can also see that a relatively small number of these tweeters have many followers visible to the search.
there are at least three possible reasons for the low number of tweeters with large numbers of followers in this group.
- some of these accounts may have their permissions set in such a way
that it prevents their followers and friends from appearing in search
results.
- another reason may be that people who tweeted with the text [miss
california] during this period typically do not know each other
directly on twitter, and do not have many friends and followers
themselves.
- the search term used [miss california] may be filtering out highly connected twitter users who tweeted the search term.
let's examine reason #3.
the following diagram was generated by graphing 30 randomly selected users who sent tweets containing the text [rt miss california] between approx. 2:01 pm EST and 3:14 pm EST on tuesday may 12, 2009.
this diagram depicts a moderately connected group, with each of the 30 twitter users connected to at least one other user in the search results.
this contrasts with the results for the same period, with a very similar search term, varying only with the additions of the letters 'rt' in the second search.
'rt' in a twitter message is a shorthand for saying that the message is being forwarded on behalf of another user.
therefore, these results taken together suggest that people who forward messages about a particular topic on twitter tend to be a more highly connected group than users who might be talking about that same topic, but without forwarding the discussion to their own followers.
at a minimum, the structure of this graph suggests that people who retweet messages generally know each other. these results also highlight the importance of choosing the right search term to identify tweets and tweeters you're interested in locating.
these diagrams were generated by the tweeterbrowser.