Two types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter.

In the Twitter blogosphere, the number of followers is probably the most basic and succinct quantity for measuring popularity of users. However, the number of followers can be manipulated in various ways; we can even buy follows. Therefore, alternative popularity measures for Twitter users on the ba...

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Autores principales:	Kodai Saito, Naoki Masuda
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/bf2602935c504dbba26ed37b2f83b443
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:bf2602935c504dbba26ed37b2f83b443
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:bf2602935c504dbba26ed37b2f83b4432021-11-18T08:38:36ZTwo types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0084265https://doaj.org/article/bf2602935c504dbba26ed37b2f83b4432014-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/24416209/pdf/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203In the Twitter blogosphere, the number of followers is probably the most basic and succinct quantity for measuring popularity of users. However, the number of followers can be manipulated in various ways; we can even buy follows. Therefore, alternative popularity measures for Twitter users on the basis of, for example, users' tweets and retweets, have been developed. In the present work, we take a purely network approach to this fundamental question. First, we find that two relatively distinct types of users possessing a large number of followers exist, in particular for Japanese, Russian, and Korean users among the seven language groups that we examined. A first type of user follows a small number of other users. A second type of user follows approximately the same number of other users as the number of follows that the user receives. Then, we compare local (i.e., egocentric) followership networks around the two types of users with many followers. We show that the second type, which is presumably uninfluential users despite its large number of followers, is characterized by high link reciprocity, a large number of friends (i.e., those whom a user follows) for the followers, followers' high link reciprocity, large clustering coefficient, large fraction of the second type of users among the followers, and a small PageRank. Our network-based results support that the number of followers used alone is a misleading measure of user's popularity. We propose that the number of friends, which is simple to measure, also helps us to assess the popularity of Twitter users.Kodai SaitoNaoki MasudaPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 9, Iss 1, p e84265 (2014)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Kodai Saito Naoki Masuda Two types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter.
description	In the Twitter blogosphere, the number of followers is probably the most basic and succinct quantity for measuring popularity of users. However, the number of followers can be manipulated in various ways; we can even buy follows. Therefore, alternative popularity measures for Twitter users on the basis of, for example, users' tweets and retweets, have been developed. In the present work, we take a purely network approach to this fundamental question. First, we find that two relatively distinct types of users possessing a large number of followers exist, in particular for Japanese, Russian, and Korean users among the seven language groups that we examined. A first type of user follows a small number of other users. A second type of user follows approximately the same number of other users as the number of follows that the user receives. Then, we compare local (i.e., egocentric) followership networks around the two types of users with many followers. We show that the second type, which is presumably uninfluential users despite its large number of followers, is characterized by high link reciprocity, a large number of friends (i.e., those whom a user follows) for the followers, followers' high link reciprocity, large clustering coefficient, large fraction of the second type of users among the followers, and a small PageRank. Our network-based results support that the number of followers used alone is a misleading measure of user's popularity. We propose that the number of friends, which is simple to measure, also helps us to assess the popularity of Twitter users.
format	article
author	Kodai Saito Naoki Masuda
author_facet	Kodai Saito Naoki Masuda
author_sort	Kodai Saito
title	Two types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter.
title_short	Two types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter.
title_full	Two types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter.
title_fullStr	Two types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter.
title_full_unstemmed	Two types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter.
title_sort	two types of well followed users in the followership networks of twitter.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2014
url	https://doaj.org/article/bf2602935c504dbba26ed37b2f83b443
work_keys_str_mv	AT kodaisaito twotypesofwellfollowedusersinthefollowershipnetworksoftwitter AT naokimasuda twotypesofwellfollowedusersinthefollowershipnetworksoftwitter
_version_	1718421525557673984

Two types of well followed users in the followership networks of Twitter.

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