The Intriguing Psychology of Twitter: Why We Follow, Favorite, Share, and Return
When I choose someone new to follow, compose a new tweet, or favorite an update, I infrequently suppose the bestfollowers in mind. My ensuing sessions would feel erratic to a stranger, and my favorite fashion comes and goes from one strategy to another. Indeed, how I use Twitter is far less arbitrary than I allowed. There’s wisdom and psychology behind the way we all tweet.
Experimenters have discovered trends in how we perform every significant action on Twitter, favoriting, streamlining, participating, and following. And there’s indeed an intriguing bit of psychology behind what makes Twitter so seductive in the first place. Then’s a look at the psychology of Twitter, what makes us follow, favorite, share, and keep coming back for further.
Why we love Twitter so important: Rats, regulators, and psychology
I’ve hit further than my fair share of Twitter wormholes twinkles that turn to hours as I find more and more tweets to read and partake in. Does that sound familiar to you, too? There was a cerebral reason behind the draw of Twitter. After digging around, sure enough, I came across a perfect explanation of this miracle, courtesy of University of Texas clinical psychologist Dr. Marion Underwood. The underpinning schedule that’s the most buttressing is intermittent. So, you have a rat pushing a switch, and he gets awarded, but not in a predictable way. Numerous times, that beast pushes that switch, and nothing comes, but it gets a great treat every once in a while. So the rat keeps pressing and pressing and pressing, though there’s no critical underpinning coming because it’s just great occasionally.
This hit home for me. Twitter offers these intermittent prices that keep us coming back. You may check Twitter formerly and have an announcement that someone retweeted you. That’s enough to keep you returning a sprinkle more times if nothing new and satisfying has passed. We keep pushing the switch, hoping for a great commodity. The conception makes complete sense for those who check Twitter multiple times daily (the same goes for dispatch, too). And just as there’s psychology behind why we love Twitter so much, there’s wisdom and data behind the numerous ways we interact. Then are three of the most intriguing studies I’ve come across.
Why do we follow The 15 factors that affect follower growth
What spurs us to follow someone on Twitter? Experimenters at Georgia Tech and Michigan combined to study the factors involved in the following. Their study looked at further than 500 Twitter druggies and a half-million of their tweets and anatomized follower count over 15 months — one of the most extended timeframes you’ll see in a Twitter study. The exploration platoon worked from a base of follower growth factors comprising variables from social wisdom, linguistics, computer-intermediated communication, and network proposition. In other words, if there’s any reason why someone would follow someone differently on Twitter, this study reckoned for it.
The factors they came up with boiled down to three orders: social actions, communication content, and social network structure.
They are the individual factors for each, starting with social actions:
- Tweet volume
- Burstiness– tweets per hour
- Relations– replies, mentions, and pets
- Broadcast communication– the rate of tweets with no@- citation
- Responsibility of the profile– How well is the memoir filled out? Is there a URL in the profile? Is there a position listed?
The individual factors for communication content:
- Positive/ negative sentiment
- Instructional content– the rate of tweets containing either a URL, RT, MT, HT, or “via.”
- Meformer content– the rate of tweets containing tone- representing pronouns like “I,” “me,” “we,” and “us.”
- Content focus
- Retweets– how frequently your content gets retweeted
- Hashtag operation
- TReDIX– Tweet Reading Difficulty Index( grounded on the frequency of actual English words longer than six letters)
The individual factors in social network structure:
- Reciprocity– The quantity of individuals you follow who likewise follow you
- Attention– status rate rate followers compared to total following
- Network imbrication– How analogous are the people you follow to those a follower follows
Knowing what’s behind these factors, how would you rate them in terms of significance? Which factor helps gain the most followers?
Why we partake A companion to penning the most shareable tweet
I’m sure we’d each love to know what makes for a perfect tweet. Cornell experimenters were interested, too. They conducted a study that examined more than 1.7 million tweet dyads, comparing the differences in language between the two tweets and assigning value grounded on which style of tweet earnings more retweets. Their conclusion helpful wording heuristics include adding further information, making one’s language aligned with both community morals and with one’s previous dispatches, and mimicking news captions. Still, the experimenters didn’t find one. Suppose you were looking for an exact formula for a perfect tweet. Still, they offered many stylish practices to continue with their conclusion above.
- It helps to ask people to partake
- Informativeness helps
- Sound like your community
- Imitate captions
- Relate to other people but not to your followership( “ he ” and “ she ” rather than “ you ”)
- The easier to read, the better
Maybe stylish, the exploration platoon put together a tool based on their findings to help you perfect your posts. Enter two analogous tweets into the Retweeted More tool, and you’ll get an algorithmic answer about which is better.
Why do we favorite response & function
A study published by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence sought to put our favoriting styles into order. They quizzed a group of further than 600 Twitter druggies by asking two questions:
- Explain why you tend to favorite tweets.
- Explain the reasons for your most recent favorite tweet.
They entered more than 331 answers to these questions and placed each answer into one or further orders. Then’s the entire taxonomy of orders they used to classify pets. What’s intriguing about how these 331 answers fell is that two distinct use cases for pets came up. The exploration established that people favor a tweet for one of two reasons:
- response/ response
- Function/ purpose
The psychology, then, is intriguing. Responses and responses are directly due to the tweet’s content or the tweet’s author. We favor what we like. We favor our musketeers and family( and if I’m honest, celebrities). When we favorite for mileage, we’re seeking to fulfill a thing or a purpose. We favorite to bookmark. We like to communicate. Still, your fave would fall into the function/ purpose order (If you’ve ever favorited a commodity you agree with. The authors of the study claim that favoritism is meant to be liked by the one doing the favoriting, not for the author.)
Do these perceptions ring true to you?
Psychology shows us how Twitter can be so addictive. We crave a great experience each time we pull the Twitter switch, which keeps us returning for further. Research and data reveal a bit about the way that we use Twitter. We follow it grounded on our network, retweet grounded on tried-and-true formulas, and favorite for response or function. The standard advice workshop, so we’ll repeat it. But also keep reading for our take on how to grow followers. Gaining Twitter followers is like playing chess; to win, you must use the winning strategies learned over time, but you must understand your opponent’s psychology to use the stylish strategy.
