How Developers Stay Current Using Twitter

Software Engineering at the Speed of Light: How Developers Stay Current Using TwitterLeif SingerFernando Figueira FilhoMargaret-Anne Storey

@LSinger @FFilho_ @MargaretStorey

2

3

#icse14 #twitter4se @lsinger

Why & how do developers use Twitter?

What value does it provide?

What challenges does it pose?

How do developers cope with these challenges?

Why do other developers not use Twitter for work?

4

RELATED WORK

Related Work In Software Engineering:

Analysis of sampled tweet contents [Bougie et al. 2011]

Classification of tweets [Tian et al. 2012]

Qualitative investigation of Drupal’s Twitter use [Wang et al. 2013]

6

But how and why do developers tweet?

STUDY DESIGN

Study Design Exploratory Survey: get a feel for attitudes

• emailed 1,160 active GitHub users – 271 responded

Interviews: deeper insights about value, challenges• 27 – from exploratory survey

Analysis: Grounded Theory• codes, categories, themes, memos, …

Validation Survey: do developers agree? • emailed 10,000 active GitHub users – 1,413 responded

8

FINDINGS

1,413 Validation Survey Participants

10

Barrier: Too Much Noise.

“It’s a time sink. It just consumes a lot of time to read.”[P25]

Some developers (35 exploratory survey respondents and5 interview participants) felt they were drowning in the noisecaused by an excess of information received on Twitter eachday. Some use other tools to stay updated and build net-works. P14 decided to build his network on Google+ withpreference for the Google+ circles feature. Likewise, P4commented: “On G+ you have that control, you can sayI wanna see more from this person, I wanna see less fromthis person.” P26 discusses the use of IRC channels: “I get alot of news about these things on IRC as well. Like as I saidI have many technology minded friends so they share linksabout new stu↵ there.”.

Barrier: Peer Adoption.

“In Taiwan most of the Internet users use Plurk. [...] Twosocial networks is too much.” [P21]

Several study participants showed that the adoption ofsocial media tools depends on one’s social context. For in-stance, P21 is a Taiwanese software developer who prefersto use a tool more broadly adopted by their peers. In con-sequence, P21 told us that they do not have enough time toalso maintain an active Twitter account—even though theysaid that it could possibly help them connect with Westerndevelopers. Similarly, 8 respondents from our exploratorysurvey mentioned that Twitter was a poor match for theirsocial networks, i.e., it was not used by their friends or col-leagues or even in their country.

Barrier: 140 Character Constraint.

“Posts are too short, with almost zero context, with a lowsignal to noise ratio. I want full articles, preferably withmedia embedded so I don’t have to make multiple clicks tofind out what the post is about.” [E155]

Whereas many of the adopters appreciated the brief andconcise postings, 9 respondents from our exploratory sur-vey mentioned that they did not like this limitation. Themicroblog limitation also has the impact that many postersshorten web links and 3 respondents specifically mentionedthis: “Twitter messages are too short to contain anythinguseful with context. Also people often use link-shorteners intheir messages which is a dangerous practice.” [E29]

Barrier: Poor Support for Conversations.

“I like conversation. I like having a conversation. I don’tlike having big conversations, but having two or three peoplein a conversation, talking about a topic ... it’s nice. And Idon’t find I get conversation on Twitter very much”. [P4]

Twitter was not designed to promote long conversationsand multiple conversation threads quickly become unbear-able to manage. Additionally, conversations on Twitter arequite ephemeral as tweets may only be accessible for a fewdays. Some study participants reported that they preferredto move conversations from Twitter to a more suitable mediumsuch as email or IRC.Three interview participants and six exploratory survey

respondents mentioned having a hard time using Twitterfor its lack of support for conversations. Some mentioneda preference for GitHub and Google+ which provide bettersupport for conversations, especially those that may involvecriticism of work or complex explanations.

Barrier: Unsure of Benefits.Finally, 22 respondents from our exploratory survey said

they did not use Twitter because they didn’t have a reasonor didn’t understand why to use it: “I don’t understand itand I don’t see any purpose for it.” [E43]

5. VALIDATION SURVEYThe previous section discussed the themes we found from

the exploratory survey and interviews for each of the fiveresearch questions. We now report on a validation surveythat we conducted to gauge how pervasive these themes areamong GitHub users.As reported in section 3, we emailed our survey to 10,000

GitHub users that had been recently active on the site. Thequestionnaire is available online6. We derived the surveyquestions from the themes found through the exploratorysurvey and interviews.1,413 GitHub users answered our validation survey. Fig. 1

provides some details on the demographics of these respon-dents. All except one respondent said they develop softwarein some capacity, with the majority (81%) being professionalsoftware developers. Roughly two-thirds of our respondentssaid they use Twitter at least once a week (adopters). 70%wanted to be notified of the results of our study.

81%

19%

67%

33%

70%

30%

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 1: Validation survey respondents.(a) 81% (1,145) professional, 19% (267) non-professional developers, 1 non-developer;(b) 67% (940) use Twitter at least once a week,33% (473) do not; (c) 70% (993) were interested instudy results.

A large part of the survey consisted of statements, eachrelated to a theme from our findings. For these statements,we measured agreement using a five-point Likert-type scale.

6https:/ / docs. google. com/ forms/ d/1 FxuT3 ORoSjMqQks7hF2 gRyncjfJ8D0 QBXJaqfmy97pU/viewform?entry. 1 82 1 3 50 3 1 1 =example

10

(a) 81% / 1,145 professional developers(b) 67% / 940 use Twitter at least once a week(c) 70% / 993 interested in results

Results Value

• Awareness• Learning• Relationships

Challenges & Coping Strategies

Non-adoption

11

VALUE: AWARENESS

Value: Awareness

13

‣ Following developers and projects‣ Following thought leaders‣ Promoting project activities‣ Just-in-time awareness

“I think the main advantage is to be in contact with people who are developing things that I use. There are people developing libraries and I can communicate with them through Twitter.” [P11]

14

Value: Awareness

Figures 2–5 report the results for these statements. Agree-ment and disagreement are represented by shaded bars, per-centages, and absolute numbers. Neutral answers are notshown explicitly, but can be derived from the white space ina chart. We chose this representation to emphasize agree-ment and disagreement. For these statements, we only re-port on answers from Twitter adopters.We revisit the survey responses according to each research

question.

5.1 RQ1: Developer AwarenessOur first research question asked how Twitter can help

developers become or stay aware of people, trends, and prac-tices related to software development. We found that devel-opers follow other developers, projects, news curators, andthought leaders. This allows them to stay aware of newpractices and resources in a timely manner and providesthem with access to diverse opinions. Developers also pro-mote their projects and activities, which may in turn helpthe dissemination of knowledge and increase the adoption ofpractices and tools.

(1) On Twitter, I follow leaders in my technological niche, whichhelps me stay current about the latest technologies and practices.

13% 71%130 developers 673 developers

(2) Twitter helps me promote projects and technologies I work with.


(3) Twitter helps me keep up to date about technologies and tools Iuse for software development.


(4) Twitter helps me stay aware of new trends and practices in soft-ware development.


strongly disagree disagree

strongly agree agree

Figure 1: Results from our validation survey.Figure 2: Results from our validation survey (RQ1)for developers who use Twitter at least once a week.

In our validation survey, we included statements for fourthemes related to this research question (cf. Fig. 2):

(1) 71% of survey respondents (673) agreed or stronglyagreed that they follow leaders in their respective tech-nological niches and that this helps them stay currentwith technologies and practices.

(2) 58% (541) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter helpsthem promote the projects and technologies they workwith.

(3) 69% (650) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter helpsthem stay up to date about technologies and tools theyalready use.

(4) 65% (611) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter helpsthem stay aware of new development trends and prac-tices.

These answers strengthen our finding that many develop-ers use Twitter to stay current with software developmentpractices and tools. This also implies that some developerseither feel that they have to stay current or that they wantto. The latter is in agreement with our finding from RQ2 that developers enjoy learning, but some developers alsoreported that they thought that they had to stay current tostay competitive.The statement about promotion shows the lowest agree-

ment in this set of questions. This makes sense: consuming,using, and learning about technologies and practices has tocome before one is able to produce anything that one wouldwant to promote or teach to others. As we have access to theTwitter and GitHub usernames for many of the respondents,we will analyze this aspect in future work: it’s possible thatless-experienced developers disagree with this question be-cause they have yet to produce anything they feel would beworth promoting.In summary, our initial findings from the exploratory sur-

vey and interviews, as well as the results from our validationsurvey, indicate that Twitter plays an important role in thedi↵usion of software development practices, tools, and otherresources—at least for many members of the population weexamined in our study.

5.2 RQ2: LearningOur second research question asked how Twitter can help

developers extend their knowledge. We found that devel-opers ask and answer questions on Twitter, follow expertsto benefit from their experience, and feel that participat-ing in conversations helps them learn. Developers said thatthe qualities and constraints of Twitter enabled serendipi-tous, undirected learning, sometimes giving them access toresources they wouldn’t have been able to find themselves.While participants viewed learning as an investment, theyalso thought it was fun and rewarding.

(5) Twitter helps me extend my knowledge by exposing me to tech-nologies and practices I should learn in software development.


(6) Twitter has helped me become a better programmer.


(7) Twitter helps me learn about things I wasn’t actively looking for.





In our validation survey, we included statements for threethemes related to this research question (cf. Fig. 3):

(5) 60% of survey respondents (565) agreed or stronglyagreed that Twitter exposes them to technologies andpractices that they should learn in software develop-ment. Only 18% disagreed.

(6) 31% (291) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter has

11

Figures 2– 5 report the results for these statements. Agree-ment and disagreement are represented by shaded bars, per-centages, and absolute numbers. Neutral answers are notshown explicitly , but can be derived from the white space ina chart. We chose this representation to emphasiz e agree-ment and disagreement. For these statements, we only re-port on answers from Twitter adopters.

We revisit the survey responses according to each researchquestion.














In our validation survey , we included statements for fourthemes related to this research question (cf. Fig. 2):





These answers strengthen our finding that many develop-ers use Twitter to stay current with software developmentpractices and tools. This also implies that some developerseither feel that they have to stay current or that they wantto. The latter is in agreement with our finding from RQ2 that developers enjoy learning, but some developers alsoreported that they thought that they had to stay current tostay competitive.

The statement about promotion shows the lowest agree-ment in this set of questions. This makes sense: consuming,using, and learning about technologies and practices has tocome before one is able to produce any thing that one wouldwant to promote or teach to others. As we have access to theTwitter and GitHub usernames for many of the respondents,we will analy z e this aspect in future work: it’s possible thatless-experienced developers disagree with this question be-cause they have y et to produce any thing they feel would beworth promoting.

In summary , our initial findings from the exploratory sur-vey and interviews, as well as the results from our validationsurvey , indicate that Twitter play s an important role in thedi↵usion of software development practices, tools, and otherresources— at least for many members of the population weexamined in our study .












In our validation survey , we included statements for threethemes related to this research question (cf. Fig. 3):



11

VALUE: LEARNING

Value: Learning

16

‣ Extending knowledge‣ Learning serendipitously

17

Kelly Sommers@kellabyte

15RETWEETS

29FAVORITES

Twitter is like the best study group I've ever had.

Reply Retweet Favorited

1:21 AM - 28 Dec 13

Following

More

Reply to @kellabyte

mrb @mrb_bk@kellabyte same!

28 Dec

Details Reply Retweet Favorite More

Scott Saad @saadware@kellabyte Curious how you use twitter as study group. You prefer it over community sites like Stackoverflow? Or as a supplement?

28 Dec


Kelly Sommers @kellabyte@saadware I think they are for different purposes. Twitter seems very social and organic in how conversations flow and ppl just jump in

28 Dec


Kelly Sommers @kellabyte@saadware I’ve had the privilege to see such amazing people jump into a random technical debate and bring so much value.

28 Dec


Corey Donohoe @atmos@mrb_bk you guys are doing it right. !

28 Dec


Home Connect Discover Me Search

78,60978,609TWEETSTWEETS

286286FOLLOWINGFOLLOWING

16,38016,380FOLLOWERSFOLLOWERS

Kelly Sommers@kellabyte

DataStax MVP for Apache Cassandra and Windows Azure MVP,Mobile dev maven, backend brat, big data and distributed diva,

Relentless learner. I void warranties.Canada · kellabyte.com

Follow

Value: Learning

18


question.




































11


question.




































11

VALUE: RELATIONSHIPS

Value: Relationships

20

‣ Managing one’s image‣ Building community‣ Discovery of interesting developers‣ Achieving trust and rapport‣ Work validation and feedback on projects‣ Job opportunities

helped them become a better programmer—whereas39% (368) disagreed.

(7) 72% (677) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter helpsthem learn about things they were not actively lookingfor.

These results confirm that exposure to practices and toolsthrough Twitter influences a significant proportion of devel-opers in what and how they learn. This makes it apparentthat the thought leaders mentioned in the previous researchquestion really do have a certain influence on their followers.Relatedly, the responses to statement (7) in the survey showthat developers use Twitter for serendipitous discovery andlearning.Conversely, there were divided opinions on whether Twit-

ter actually helped developers become better programmers.It’s possible that Twitter as a channel for content is viewedas less important than the actual content itself—more ex-tensive learning materials can only be linked to on Twit-ter. Similarly, developers might learn less about practiceson Twitter than about tools and other resources—after all,tools and libraries can easily be linked to within a tweet andthen tried out, while practices take more e↵ort to trial. Fu-ture work should investigate this relationship further. Still,31% of survey respondents, or 291 software developers, agreedthat Twitter had made them better programmers—in ourview this is still an impressive e↵ect.

5.3 RQ3: RelationshipsOur third research question explored how Twitter can help

nurture relationships between developers. We found that itcan help them discover interesting developers, and achievetrust and rapport with distant colleagues—whether thoseare co-workers in the same company or just peers workingon related open source projects in their spare time. Somedevelopers consciously manage their own image on Twit-ter as it can provide them with validation and feedback oftheir work and might even let them access job opportunities.Some developers use Twitter to build communities aroundtechnologies they care about.In our validation survey, we included statements for eight

themes related to this research question (cf. Fig. 4):

(8) 52% of survey respondents (485) agreed or stronglyagreed that Twitter helps them manage their image asa developer.

(9) 41% (381) agreed or strongly agreed that it helps thembuild community around projects they contribute to.

(10) 30% (283) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter ishelpful for business networking.

(11) 67% (627) agreed or strongly agreed that it helps themdiscover interesting software developers.

(12) 49% (452) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter ishelpful in building trust and rapport with other devel-opers. 23% disagreed.

For most of these results, agreement is not that high, withthe exception of statement (11). Statement (11) refers to arather passive, consuming activity. The other statements,such as the one about business networking, all relate to ac-tivities that would require developers to interact with others

(8) Twitter helps me manage my own image as a developer.


(9) Twitter helps me build community around projects I contributeto.


(10) Twitter helps me do business networking.


(11) Twitter helps me discover interesting software developers.


(12) Twitter helps me build trust or rapport with other developers.


(13) Twitter helps me receive validation from others for my work.


(14) Twitter helps me give and get feedback about projects I workwith.


(15) Twitter helps me access job opportunities.





over Twitter. Using the Twitter usernames of survey respon-dents, we intend to investigate this phenomenon in a futureanalysis: it’s possible that agreement to these statements iscorrelated with a developer’s conversation volume or styleon Twitter, or their activities on GitHub.Similar results can be seen in the other statements related

to this research question:

(13) 34% of survey respondents (318) agreed or stronglyagreed that Twitter provides them with validation oftheir work. 35% (329) disagreed.

(14) 44% (409) agreed or strongly agreed that it helps themgive and get feedback on their projects. 30% (277)disagreed.

(15) 28% (260) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter ishelpful in finding job opportunities. But 44% (411)disagreed.

The activities implied by statements (13) and (14) wouldagain require a developer experienced enough to have pro-duced work that he or she would like to share. Also, manydevelopers might not be able or allowed to share their workopenly. An analysis of the experience and job situationsof survey respondents might be able to shed light into thisissue.

12

CHALLENGES

Challenge: Maintaining a Relevant Network

22

‣ value of Twitter is in the network‣ can become obsolete – move, new job,

different technologies, …‣ can become too large – overwhelming

“When you follow 1,000 accounts, many things you see are just not for you.” [P16]

Challenge: Consuming Content

23

‣ lots of content to consume‣ Twitter can impact productivity by leading to distractions

Statement (15) again is probably only relevant to a subsetof developers: those who are interested in job opportunities,are experienced enough to be attractive for potential em-ployers, and are able to publish their work openly as a port-folio. Other developers may have to resort to finding workthrough more traditional channels. Again, a future analysismight provide interesting insights into these results.It is worth noting, that in terms of absolute numbers,

there are still hundreds of developers agreeing with the state-ments provided in the survey. Consequently, Twitter ap-pears to be useful for managing relationships for at least asubset of the population we surveyed.

5.4 RQ4: ChallengesOur fourth research question investigated the challenges

faced by software developers using Twitter and how theycope with them. We found that a central challenge is tomaintain a relevant network. To do so, developers may firstchoose to follow a few thought leaders from their technolog-ical niche. They would then discover new developers basedon whom the thought leaders retweet and mention. How-ever, each additional user will increase the volume of contentin one’s timeline—thus, developers would carefully considerwhether to follow someone. Following someone was some-times mentioned as being on a trial basis: some developersroutinely remove irrelevant or high-volume users from theirtimelines.Another challenge lies in consuming the content. Devel-

opers reported a number of di↵erent strategies they used tostay on top of their timelines, such as filtering some key-words, using others’ profile pictures to quickly skim theirtimelines, or skimming regularly and often. Others reportedthat they did not even try to read every tweet but just lookedat what was at the top of their timeline.In our validation survey, we included statements for six


(16) 72% of survey respondents (672) agreed or stronglyagreed that they are careful about who they follow onTwitter to avoid information overload.

(17) 67% (628) agreed or strongly agreed that they followedothers merely on a trial basis first and then unfollowedusers with irrelevant or too much content.

(18) 41% of respondents (368) agreed that it can be hardto cope with the information load on Twitter. 34%disagreed.

Statements (16) and (17) show a relatively strong agree-ment and low disagreement. This indicates that being care-ful of whom to follow and following only on a trial basisare both strategies used by many developers who are activeTwitter users—at least in the population we surveyed.We were surprised that only 41% of respondents thought

that information overload was a problem on Twitter—weexpected more developers to be a↵ected. It’s possible thatthe strategies used to keep the volume low in one’s timelineare e↵ective, or developers simply stop using Twitter whenthey feel overwhelmed.Statements that related to the advantages and disadvan-

tages of Twitter’s constraints show relatively strong agree-ment:

(19) 68% of survey respondents (632) appreciated the suc-cinctness that the 140 character limit enforces.

(16) I carefully decide whom I follow in order to avoid informationoverload on my Twitter feed.


(17) On Twitter, I usually follow people on a trial basis and unfollowthem if they post irrelevant or too much content.


(18) I find it hard to cope with the amount of information I receiveon Twitter.


(19) I appreciate the succinctness of 140 characters per post on Twit-ter.


(20) Twitter is fine for short discussions.


(21) Twitter doesn’t allow for long discussions, and I prefer usingother channels for that purpose.





(20) 60% (562) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter canbe used for short discussions.

(21) 80% (745) agreed or strongly agreed that they preferchannels other than Twitter for long discussions.

Contrary to some complaints we heard about Twitter’scharacter limit, 68% of survey respondents (682) agreed thatthe enforced succinctness helps them. In some interviews,developers told us that this helps them manage the vol-ume of posts they have to skim. A few developers saidthat on Google+, which has no such limit, skimming wasmuch harder. Therefore, they were more likely to feel over-whelmed.

800

400

00!

200!

400!

600!

800!

discuss:'adopters'

LegendTwitter Blogs In PersonEmail Chat OtherGoogle+ Facebook

Figure 6: The channels Twitter adopters said theyuse for longer discussions.

Statements (20) and (21) both addressed the issue of dis-cussions on Twitter. Short discussions seem to be tolerable

13

COPING STRATEGIES

Strategy: Following Relevant Developers

25

‣ find key developers from one’s niche, follow them‣ find similar people mentioned by key developers,

consider following them‣ look at source code before deciding to follow‣ real-life recommendations from co-workers‣ look for geographically close developers‣ read bio for first impression; #followers, #tweets

Strategy: Unfollowing Developers on Twitter

26

‣ own and others’ interests change – continuously adapt network

‣ following on a trial basis: relevant? volume OK?‣ can always unfollow‣ routines for purging following lists

27

Statement (15) again is probably only relevant to a subsetof developers: those who are interested in job opportunities,are experienced enough to be attractive for potential em-ployers, and are able to publish their work openly as a port-folio. Other developers may have to resort to finding workthrough more traditional channels. Again, a future analysismight provide interesting insights into these results.It is worth noting, that in terms of absolute numbers,

there are still hundreds of developers agreeing with the state-ments provided in the survey. Consequently, Twitter ap-pears to be useful for managing relationships for at least asubset of the population we surveyed.

5.4 RQ4: ChallengesOur fourth research question investigated the challenges

faced by software developers using Twitter and how theycope with them. We found that a central challenge is tomaintain a relevant network. To do so, developers may firstchoose to follow a few thought leaders from their technolog-ical niche. They would then discover new developers basedon whom the thought leaders retweet and mention. How-ever, each additional user will increase the volume of contentin one’s timeline—thus, developers would carefully considerwhether to follow someone. Following someone was some-times mentioned as being on a trial basis: some developersroutinely remove irrelevant or high-volume users from theirtimelines.Another challenge lies in consuming the content. Devel-

opers reported a number of di↵erent strategies they used tostay on top of their timelines, such as filtering some key-words, using others’ profile pictures to quickly skim theirtimelines, or skimming regularly and often. Others reportedthat they did not even try to read every tweet but just lookedat what was at the top of their timeline.In our validation survey, we included statements for six


(16) 72% of survey respondents (672) agreed or stronglyagreed that they are careful about who they follow onTwitter to avoid information overload.

(17) 67% (628) agreed or strongly agreed that they followedothers merely on a trial basis first and then unfollowedusers with irrelevant or too much content.

(18) 41% of respondents (368) agreed that it can be hardto cope with the information load on Twitter. 34%disagreed.

Statements (16) and (17) show a relatively strong agree-ment and low disagreement. This indicates that being care-ful of whom to follow and following only on a trial basisare both strategies used by many developers who are activeTwitter users—at least in the population we surveyed.We were surprised that only 41% of respondents thought

that information overload was a problem on Twitter—weexpected more developers to be a↵ected. It’s possible thatthe strategies used to keep the volume low in one’s timelineare e↵ective, or developers simply stop using Twitter whenthey feel overwhelmed.Statements that related to the advantages and disadvan-

tages of Twitter’s constraints show relatively strong agree-ment:

(19) 68% of survey respondents (632) appreciated the suc-cinctness that the 140 character limit enforces.

(16) I carefully decide whom I follow in order to avoid informationoverload on my Twitter feed.


(17) On Twitter, I usually follow people on a trial basis and unfollowthem if they post irrelevant or too much content.


(18) I find it hard to cope with the amount of information I receiveon Twitter.


(19) I appreciate the succinctness of 140 characters per post on Twit-ter.


(20) Twitter is fine for short discussions.


(21) Twitter doesn’t allow for long discussions, and I prefer usingother channels for that purpose.





(20) 60% (562) agreed or strongly agreed that Twitter canbe used for short discussions.

(21) 80% (745) agreed or strongly agreed that they preferchannels other than Twitter for long discussions.

Contrary to some complaints we heard about Twitter’scharacter limit, 68% of survey respondents (682) agreed thatthe enforced succinctness helps them. In some interviews,developers told us that this helps them manage the vol-ume of posts they have to skim. A few developers saidthat on Google+, which has no such limit, skimming wasmuch harder. Therefore, they were more likely to feel over-whelmed.

800

400

00!

200!

400!

600!

800!

discuss:'adopters'

LegendTwitter Blogs In PersonEmail Chat OtherGoogle+ Facebook

Figure 6: The channels Twitter adopters said theyuse for longer discussions.

Statements (20) and (21) both addressed the issue of dis-cussions on Twitter. Short discussions seem to be tolerable

13

“Offline” Discussions

NON-ADOPTION

Barriers

29

‣ Too much noise‣ Peer adoption‣ 140 character constraint‣ Poor support for conversations‣ Unsure of the benefits

“I don’t understand it and I don’t see any purpose for it.” [E43]

LIMITATIONS

not generalizable to• corporate settings

• other cultures

• other microblogging tools

• perhaps not even to other active GitHub users!

but: validation survey was encouraging

31

Limitations

FUTURE WORK

Future Work influence on practice & tool diffusion

challenges of appropriation• SE-specific tools? how it fits with other tools?

• different personalities, contexts, needs, …

non-adoption difficult to study

other cultures...

33

Western • Educated • Industrialized • Rich • Democratic

CONCLUSIONS

@LSinger @FFilho_ @MargaretStorey

Twitter provides value to professional developers• awareness, learning, relationships

• appropriated, not made for this – problem?

Found challenges & strategies• our readers agree: helpful!

Non-adoption interesting, difficult to investigate

Developers are an appreciative audience

Do you use Twitter to support your research? If yes, tell us how by using #twitter4ser

AFTERMATH

109 retweets. 42 favorites. 270 tweets from others. 38 new followers.

Leif Singer@lsinger

109RETWEETS

42FAVORITES

How Software Developers Use Twitter: study results are in! to.leif.me/how-software-d… (HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6802578)

Reply Delete Favorite

6:10 PM - 26 Nov 13

More

Reply to @lsinger

Ramon Roche � @mrpollo@lsinger awesome read man, glad I could be part of it, Thanks!

26 Nov

Details Reply Retweet Favorited More

Timo Cramer @timocramer@lsinger I don't see much of me in there, but I hope, it wasn't useless ;)

26 Nov


Karlkim Suwanmongkol @kimsk@lsinger nice research.. pretty much sum up how I use twitter. Twitter have a lot of noise, but good links finally bubble up to the top.

27 Nov


(415) - Asher Bond @AsherBond@lsinger You have #SharedYourFindings. I have shared your findings.

27 Nov


Home Connect Discover Me Search

Comments on the blog post.

WHAT'S THIS?ALSO ON LEIF SINGER'S BLOG

ICSE 2013: Four Days of San Francisco2 comments • 17 days ago

Leif Singer — Thanks Olga, and thanks for thecompany. :)

On Testing Culture in GitHub Projects3 comments • 16 days ago

Robert Rouse — Not necessarily. Testing what yourapplication does when, say, the input is longer thanthe field length in the database is valid if the …

Reply

• Edit • Reply •

Leif Singer • a day agoMod LukasEderThat looks great, thanks for sharing! Reminds me of Daniel Jalkut's "Elements ofTwitter Style" -- could be helpful for some as well: http://www.red-sweater.com/blo...

• Reply •

HackBoy • 3 days agoGlad to have helped you with this research :D

• Reply •

Luis • 3 days agoAnd now you have a new follower on twitter. Great post!

• Reply •

realloc • 3 days agoThanks for sharing!

• Reply •

behemoth • 3 days agogreat work,really really interesting

• Reply •

Kenneth Kinyanjui • 3 days agoI am proud to have been part of the research. This will be surely some important info to us especiallyas developers and how we interact and continue with development

• Reply •

Duane Johnson • 3 days agoGlad to have followed your tweet here! Thanks making all of your research public and available todevelopers!

5

Subscribe Add Disqus to your site

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

• Reply •

• Reply •

david karapetyan • 3 days agoFor all the devs that get their tech fix from twitter I suggest looking somewhere else like ruby weekly,javascript weekly, ..., X weekly and also reddit.com/r/programming, reddit.com/r/ruby, etc.


Leif Singer • 2 days agoMod david karapetyanIn another study we're doing we found especially the weekly newsletters to be an importantsource to be right now. Email's having a comeback, who would've thought? I like it.

1

• Reply •

r0ash • 3 days agoDifficult to being social generally is another reason for some developers, not using Twitter or fb etc.


Leif Singer • 2 days agoMod r0ashI heard that in another study before, actually. Personally, I think "acting socialable" is somethingyou can practice and get better at. So why not start on Twitter, Reddit, IRC, etc. where you canhide behind a disposable identity? You can always start over with a new one.

• Reply •

r0ash • 9 hours ago Leif SingerThanks, completely agree, this habit could be acquired, all one have to do is to find whatfascinates him/her and what content/topic to discuss. Just started once again :) but withreal identity.

1

• Reply •

LukasEder • 3 days agoI participated in that study and I'm glad to see that the general opinion matches my own experience.Twitter is really both an awesome source of niche information, fun, and also a great channel to promotemy own information off my blog (http://blog.jooq.org). It is a great place to connect with key players inmy industry, which would otherwise be out of reach (I've talked to Eric Meijer, Arun Gupta, and otherluminaries!)

But I'd like to point out that I have friends who are in the sports industry, and they feel the same wayabout Twitter. These findings really aren't innate to Twitter users who are developers.

1

Leif Singer • 2 days agoMod LukasEder

great place to connect with key players

Interesting -- would you care to chime in the comment on asking questions / talking to thoughtleaders above?

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›


follow over time. - Have a profile image and bio that shows you're an actual human being. You don't need toreveal your identity / gender / etc. but anything beyond the default image helps. It helps if youseem to be likable. People like likable people. That doesn't mean you have to agree witheverything -- just have some basic manners and provide potential value (see above) to others. - Same goes for your tweets (and possibly blog posts) -- be authentic, have manners, sharewhat you're learning. - Finally, you could try posting your questions under hashtags. Some communities are known tomonitor questions about their niche and answer those. IIRC the Drupal paper we cite in ourreport said something like that.

Most of the above of course is completely unscientific and just how I experience Twitter. YMMV.

• Reply •

whatever • 2 days ago Leif SingerI think there's some good advice on here on how to maximize success at the TwitterGame, especially the use of a profile image and bio, but it's also why I typically usegoogle and ask questions as stackexchange, expertsexexchange, reddit, irc, and seekout specialized forums before asking anything on twitter.

(Of course there are downsides to the profile image and bio and that's the obnoxiousbehaviors of recruiters and interviewers. It makes it scary to ask a dumb question on thenet, or even a newbie question.)


Leif Singer • 2 days agoMod whateverYes, why not use other channels if they're better suited for the question youhave? In our study, Twitter seemed to be much more valuable for serendipitious /undirected learning than for needing an answer to a specific problem right now.

• Reply •

AsherBond • 2 days agoI was asked to participate in community research and when the results and findings were shared I alsoshared these findings with my followers. A good leader is a good follower and I think thought leadersare good at following Technology which leads the software industry.


Leif Singer • 2 days agoMod AsherBondThanks Asher! I'm blown away by all the tweets, retweets, and favorites this blog post got. Verythankful.

whatever • 2 days agoSo I have followed 30 dozen thought leaders and 1200 dozen of the people in their networks. But only16 people follow me, half of those spammers.

So just how do I ask a question? #PissingIntoTheWind

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›


sports industry

Likewise super interesting. Our study was focused on developers of course, but there are tonsof other publications where people studied Twitter (users) in different contexts. It could be neatto compare findings across fields, actually.

• Reply •

see more

LukasEder • 2 days ago Leif Singer> would you care to chime in the comment on asking questions / talking to thoughtleaders above?

I'm not sure if I understood this. You want me to link to the discussions that I've had?Here's the one with Eric Meijer: https://twitter.com/headintheb...

tech.pro/blog/1689/does… Txs ;-) Java 8, Scala, Clojure, ...are why I jumped ship. The JVM is the stable thus smart choice for the enterprise.5:41 AM - 2 Nov 2013

Does Java 8 Still Need LINQ? Or is it Better than LINQ?By jOOQ @JavaOOQ

LINQ was one of the best things that happened to the .NET software engineeringecosystem in a long time. With its introduction of lambda expressions and...

Erik Meijer @headinthebox

FollowFollow


Leif Singer • a day agoMod LukasEder

You want me to link to the discussions that I've had?

Well, I basically wanted to know whether you had any hints on how to approach /get the attention of famous people, because @whatever had brought that upabove. So you wrote a great blog post that caught the attention of Erik -- that'sawesome, and I think is pretty much in line with what I thought might help: putout great content that others find interesting. If you're a novice, tell others whatyou're learning.

• Reply •

LukasEder • a day ago Leif SingerAh, well, I'm generally following Alex Turnbull's advice here:http://groovehq.com/blog/1000-...

Essentially, it is about engaging without spamming

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

• Reply •

• Reply •




1

• Reply •




• Reply •


1

• Reply •



1




Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›




• Reply •





• Reply •






Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

• Reply •

• Reply •




1

• Reply •




• Reply •


1

• Reply •



1




Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›




• Reply •





• Reply •






Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Share ›

Hector Zarate (@iOSCowboy) blogs about our blog post.

Tweeting Developers Published 27 Nov 2013

For a long time I saw Twitter as a source of mild entertainment which occasionally brought meup to update on something relevant.

But that point of view changed recently, when I cherry-picked who I'm following anddiscovered the interaction I can have with some great developers.

In no time it became a valuable tool that updates me on what's happening in my tech niche,tips me about new interesting things to learn and puts me in touch with other cool peopledoing cool stuff.

But don't take my word for granted. Leif Singer (@lsinger), a mad scientist from the Universityof Victoria in Canada, made a thorough research on How Software Developers Use Twitter.

He wrote a great post about it on his blog that I just can't recommend enough. It includes atl;dr and usage strategies for developers using Twitter. Pure gold.

Check it out. You know, for science!

YES, WE DO HAVE BACKUP SLIDES!

41

Staying Aware Spreading Information Managing RelationshipsTwitter Adopters

800

400

00!

200!

400!

600!

800!

stay%aware:%adopters%

800

400

00!

200!

400!

600!

800!

spread:(adopters(

800

400

00!

200!

400!

600!

800!

rel:%adopters%

Twitter Non-Adopters400

200

00!

100!

200!

300!

400!

stay%aware:%non,adopters%

400

200

00!

100!

200!

300!

400!

spread:(non+adopters(

400

200

00!

100!

200!

300!

400!

rel:%non(adopters%

LegendTwitter Google+ Chat Facebook OtherEmail Blogs News Aggregators In Person

Figure 7: The channels Twitter adopters and non-adopters use for di↵erent activities.

These are just some of the strategies that could be de-rived from our findings and only include those themes withthe most support from our validation survey respondents.We discovered other usage strategies in our study (cf. sec-tion 4) that might provide additional guidance for developersin specific contexts.

6.2 Understanding Non-AdoptionThe insights provided by non-adopters and infrequent users

are valuable for understanding the limitations of Twitter insoftware engineering. Several participants did not fully un-derstand how Twitter could play a role in their professionalactivities. This is not surprising: as we learned from theadopters, using Twitter successfully requires some strate-gies. Likewise, many respondents were concerned that Twit-ter would be a distraction or would waste their time. Theseare noteworthy concerns as some that had used Twitter pre-viously stopped for these reasons. Again, adopters usedstrategies to curate content and reduce distractions.Many participants also provided insights on how other

social media tools provide the benefits that Twitter brings.In particular, several participants appreciated that Google+provides more context and better supports conversations.Adopters as well as non-adopters use news aggregators suchas Hacker News to curate technology updates. However,Twitter adopters said that Twitter lets them add yet anotherlayer of content curation.

More subtle reasons for both adoption and non-adoptionof Twitter were related to the peculiarities of the tools. Eachsocial media service supports its own set of such character-istic features: 140 characters per post for Twitter, circleson Google+, discussions tied to software projects and codeon GitHub. Their special roles and the conflicting opinionsamong our study participants became more apparent as weinvestigated the interplay between these tools.

6.3 ContributionsPrevious work investigated the role of Twitter in conver-

sations [5, 4, 2] and information dissemination [5]. Othersinvestigated the role of microblogging in increasing aware-ness and connectedness among co-workers in organizational

settings [17]. To the best of our knowledge, our study is thefirst to conduct an in-depth investigation with a diverse pop-ulation of software developers. We contrast the viewpointsfrom developers who have adopted Twitter with those whohave not. We also discuss the interplay between Twitter andrelated services.

Software developers work in a rapidly evolving field wherestaying current is both required and a challenge. Develop-ers use social media to form and maintain relationships withcoworkers within the same organizational context, but alsoto connect with and stay aware of other developers aroundthe globe. These distinctions are important when providingrecommendations for software developers themselves, butalso for organizations willing to improve their knowledgemanagement strategies to better adapt in evolving domains.

6.4 LimitationsBecause of the exploratory nature of this work, we chose

Grounded Theory as our research method, and this has someimplications regarding the limitations of our study. Whilewe achieved saturation regarding the topics we focused on inour research, there are other populations that might add newinsights. Findings from our study may not apply to every-one. Concepts and themes that emerged from our analysiscannot be generalized.

We invited active yet random GitHub users to our surveysand interviews. In all cases, participants were self selected:the population we collected data from was comprised of in-dividuals who used GitHub, had time and motivation toanswer our survey questions, and in some cases to be inter-viewed. These were often from Western countries.

However, the majority of our study participants were soft-ware developers—many of them professional ones. Our val-idation survey found high agreement for several of our find-ings. Therefore, we believe that we have uncovered valuableinsights regarding software developers’ use of Twitter.

6.5 Future WorkTwitter is used by many to keep up to date and stay

connected in software engineering, but is it the best tool fordoing so? Non-adopters mentioned a number of limitations

15

Exploratory Survey Participants: GitHub

42

NA: 100EU: 69NO: 49SA: 13AU: 3CA: 5WA: 7MA: 5EA: 3AF: 0

hirable: 80not hirable: 171

public_repos followers following followers/following created_at updated_at public_gists contributionsMEDIAN 15 7 5 0.857142857142857 2011-01-27 21:56:32 UTC 2013-09-06 11:08:00 UTC 2 226MIN 0 0 0 0 2008-01-30 23:19:18 UTC 2013-06-06 11:37:00 UTC 0 0MAX 301 1321 621 456 2013-05-27 14:43:57 UTC 2013-09-07 07:16:27 UTC 235 57875AVG 27 40 23 5 2010-12-02 18:11:37 UTC 2013-09-02 11:37:34 UTC 12 814STDEV: 35 134 57 33 503d 12h 2m 7s 627ms 10d 23h 0m 40s 720ms 26 3785

Exploratory Survey Participants: Twitter

43

Since Last tweeted at Tweets Favorites Listed Following Followers followers/followingMEDIAN 2009-05-04 09:03:37

+00002013-09-05 13:10:45

+00001124 19 5 169 144 1

MIN 2006-10-26 14:04:33 +0000

2008-01-30 13:57:31 +0000

0 0 0 0 0 0MAX 2013-05-06 15:40:39

+00002013-09-07 05:36:12

+000041079 9107 949 2600 11469 125

AVG 2009-07-08 06:44:04 +0000

2013-07-25 03:03:33 +0000

3356 251 32 287 490 3STDEV: 526d 20h 54m 18s

872ms185d 23h 19m 18s

564ms6398 882 103 369 1218 10

Interviewees: GitHub

44

public_repos followers following followers/following created_at updated_at public_gists contributionsMEDIAN 25 13 11 2 2010-08-10 22:10:48 UTC 2013-09-06 17:50:24 UTC 5 385

MIN 2 0 0 0 2008-02-02 23:25:39 UTC 2013-09-03 23:19:51 UTC 0 18

MAX 133 936 162 23 2013-04-24 21:22:13 UTC 2013-09-07 07:02:06 UTC 88 3068

AVG 38 72 21 4 2010-06-15 11:05:34 UTC 2013-09-06 08:44:21 UTC 13 728

STDEV: 37 189 32 6 488d 10h 5m 44s 457ms 0d 22h 6m 31s 167ms 19 878

NA: 12EU: 8NO: 1SA: 3AU: 1CA: 0WA: 0MA: 1EA: 1


Interviewees: Twitter

45

Since Last tweeted at Tweets Favorites Listed Following Followers followers/following

MEDIAN 2009-04-02 15:13:28 +0000

2013-09-06 15:28:18 +0000 2210.5 18.5 7.5 165.0 195.5 0.969495091164095

MIN 2007-07-11 00:01:42 +0000

2013-07-24 13:07:57 +0000 4.0 0.0 0.0 23.0 11.0 0.162878787878788

MAX 2012-02-10 20:12:06 +0000

2013-09-07 05:35:37 +0000 29644.0 2101.0 739.0 1999.0 7921.0 19.8

AVG 2009-03-19 22:57:10 +0000

2013-09-02 13:10:19 +0000 4983.1 129.2 55.4 337.0 716.4 2.8

STDEV: 418d 1h 26m 3s 456ms 11d 0h 58m 3s 698ms 7139.5 410.2 153.1 461.5 1635.4 4.4

Validation Survey Participants: GitHub

46


bio public_repos followers following created_at updated_at public_gists contributions

median 17 8 7 2011-01-20 10:36:26 UTC

2013-11-09 03:45:03 UTC

2 203

min 0 0 0 2008-01-12 16:46:24 UTC

2013-05-31 19:08:18 UTC

0 0

max 742 1191 1338 2013-11-07 00:07:11 UTC

2013-11-11 04:05:47 UTC

1549 8159

avg 28 28 22 2010-12-18 11:52:17 UTC

2013-11-05 11:13:12 UTC

15 450

stdev 43 71 58 501d 8h 54m 19s 425ms

14d 14h 16m 22s 356ms

57 686

Validation Survey Participants: Twitter

47

Since Last tweeted at Tweets Favorites Listed Following Followers

MEDIAN 1657d 4h 11m 24s 23d 21h 38m 51s 1087 26 185 154

MIN 2658d 23h 10m 7s 2055d 21h 44m 56s 0 0 0 0

MAX 55d 9h 32m 18s 21d 20h 34m 38s 155210 48918 4056 31678

AVG 1551d 15h 54m 19s 972ms 46d 11h 9m 0s 414ms 3982 387 307 519

STDEV: 577d 19h 8m 52s 816ms 123d 5h 34m 50s 731ms 9988 2250 411 1782

Date post:	10-May-2015
Category:	Social Media
Upload:	margaret-anne-storey
View:	1,358 times
Download:	1 times

How Developers Stay Current Using Twitter

Social Media