Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging
Usage and Communities
Akshay Java
University of Maryland Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250, USA
aks1@cs.umbc.edu
Xiaodan Song
NEC Laboratories America
10080 N. Wolfe Road, SW3-350
Cupertino, CA 95014, USA
xiaodan@sv.nec-labs.com
Tim Finin
University of Maryland Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250, USA
finin@cs.umbc.edu
Belle Tseng
NEC Laboratories America
10080 N. Wolfe Road, SW3-350
Cupertino, CA 95014, USA
belle@sv.nec-labs.com
ABSTRACT
Microblogging is a new form of communication in which
users can describe their current status in short posts dis-
tributed by instant messages, mobile phones, email or the
Web. Twitter, a popular microblogging tool has seen a lot
of growth since it launched in October, 2006. In this paper,
we present our observations of the microblogging phenom-
ena by studying the topological and geographical properties
of Twitter’s social network. We find that people use mi-
croblogging to talk about their daily activities and to seek
or share information. Finally, we analyze the user intentions
associated at a community level and show how users with
similar intentions connect with each other.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.3.3 [Information Search and Retrieval]: Information
Search and Retrieval - Information Filtering; J.4 [Computer
Applications]: Social and Behavioral Sciences - Economics
General Terms
Social Network Analysis, User Intent, Microblogging, Social
Media
1. INTRODUCTION
Microblogging is a relatively new phenomenon defined as “a
form of blogging that lets you write brief text updates (usu-
ally less than 200 characters) ab out your life on the go and
send them to friends and interested observers via text mes-
saging, instant messaging (IM), email or the web.”
1
.Itis
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-blogging
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provided by several services including Twitter
2
,Jaiku
3
and
more recently Pownce
4
. These tools provide a light-weight,
easy form of communication that enables users to broadcast
and share information about their activities, opinions and
status. One of the popular microblogging platforms is Twit-
ter [29]. According to ComScore, within eight months of its
launch, Twitter had about 94,000 users as of April, 2007 [9].
Figure 1 shows a snapshot of the first author’s Twitter home-
page. Updates or posts are made by succinctly describing
one’s current status within a limit of 140 characters. Top-
ics range from daily life to current events, news stories, and
other interests. IM tools including Gtalk, Yahoo and MSN
have features that allow users to share their current status
with friends on their buddy lists. Microblogging tools facili-
tate easily sharing status messages either publicly or within
asocialnetwork.
Figure 1: An example Twitter homepage with up-
dates talking about daily experiences and personal
interests.
2
http://www.twitter.com
3
http://www.jaiku.com
4
http://www.pownce.com