Classifying Twitter Users

David Horn

Cal Poly

How can you classify social network users?

What kinds of traits do they have?

How does information spread on twitter?

Power graph analysis kinda fails

Twitter is no more a social network than IRC

Following is cheap

This just in: following spammers gets you spammed

“When I unfollowed 106,000 people all my spam just stopped. Dead. “

Mavens

Discover new information

Connectors

Spread information to new communities

Ineffectual

Heavily engaged, but do not get a strong response from the community

Consumer

Less engaged with the service

Engagement Metrics

Engaged - How often others @mention a user

Engaging - How often a user @mentions others

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Enga

ged

by

Engaging

Twitter User Engagement

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Enga

ged

by

Engaging

Twitter User Engagement

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Nu

mb

er

of

use

rs e

nga

gin

g

Number of users engaged

Twitter User Engagement

Connectors

Mavens

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Nu

mb

er

of

use

rs e

nga

gin

g

Number of users engaged

Twitter User Engagement

Ineffectual

Community-at-large

Convert that to polar coordinates

(x,y) => (r,θ)

engaging

engaged

r

θ

Magnitude22 engagingengagedr

How engaged is this user with the service?

Angle

What kind of a user this is

r

engaged1sin

If magnitude > 1560°

40°

0°

90°

Connector

Maven

Ineffectual

Meme flow:

Source (anywhere)

Maven

Connector

Larger community

Time

For any particular meme, you can expect a traffic breakdown:

• 10% from trend leaders

• 20% from community leaders

• 30% from the overall community

• 40% from ineffectual users

Reach

Reach = r/engaging*followers

Chance a meme will spread

P(spread) = θ/90

http://engagerank.com

Try it out!

T