Post on 28-Nov-2014
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Exploring the Global Demographics of TwitterAxel Bruns, Darryl Woodford, and Troy Sadkowsky
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
a.bruns / dp.woodford / t.sadkowsky @ qut.edu.au
@snurb_dot_info / @dpwoodford / @tsadkowsky
http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/ / http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
THE GLOBAL TWITTER USERBASE
• Limited information:– Some details from Twitter in IPO documents and updates to shareholders– Some commercial research (e.g. Socialbakers), using unknown methods– Some extrapolations based on surveys, usually country-specific (e.g. Pew
Centre, Sensis)
• Significant gap:– Difficult to assess global and national Twitter patterns without background data– Impossible to assess relative size of local Twitterspheres without global data
OUR APPROACH
• Data gathering and analysis:– Slow crawl through Twitter account ID numberspace, from ID 0 to ID ~2,000,000,000
(as of 31 Aug. 2013)– Retrieval of all publicly available profile information for each ID from Twitter API– Storage and processing in Google BigQuery database– Data analysis via Tableau Desktop
• Limitations:– Accounts, not users (!)– All dates in AEST– Single snapshot, blurry edges: accounts created/deleted during data gathering– Twitter API not always a completely reliable data source– Data for most recent accounts will have changed substantially since gathering– No information available about deleted historical accounts– Privacy concerns (rightly) prevent any detailed profiling
CUMULATIVE GROWTH
DAILY GROWTH
TWITTER AND BREAKING NEWS
ACCELERATING GROWTH?
• Oldest surviving accounts:– @jack (ID #12), @biz (ID #13): 22 March 2006
• Daily growth:– From ~200k (March 2009) to ~900k (August 2013)
• Monthly growth:– From ~5m (March 2009) to ~26m (August 2013)
• But:– Dataset only includes accounts which still exist:
growth = accession – attrition– Attrition is likely to increase with time: most recent accounts least likely to be
deleted soon
DISTRIBUTION OF TWEETING ACTIVITY
FOLLOWERS / FRIENDS DISTRIBUTION
FRIENDS:FOLLOWERSF
oll
ow
ers
Friends
FRIENDS:FOLLOWERScolour = average account age
FRIENDS:FOLLOWERS (DETAIL)colour = average account age
1:1
0.9:1
INCREASINGLY PUBLIC
Protected accounts
PU
BL
IC V
S.
PR
IVA
TE
INCREASINGLY GLOBALIN
TE
RF
AC
E L
AN
GU
AG
E
INCREASINGLY GLOBAL
Languages / timezones / geo
INT
ER
FA
CE
TIM
EZ
ON
E
INCREASINGLY LIKE FACEBOOK?
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/@snurb_dot_info
@dpwoodford
@tsadkowsky
@jeanburgess
@timhighfield
@socialmediaQUT – http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/
This research is funded by the Australian Research Council through Future Fellowship and LIEF grants FT130100703 and LE140100148.