For some, Twitter is a social network and for others it is just a broadcast medium. Judging from the latest data from social media analytics and monitoring service Sysomos, for the majority of users, Twitter is indeed mostly a broadcast medium. After analyzing over 1.2 billion tweets, the Sysomos team found that only 29% of tweets actually produce a reaction - that is, a reply or a retweet. According to Sysomos, just 6% of all tweets are retweeted and these retweets have a very short lifespan. Virtually all retweets happen within the first hour after the original tweet.
via @alexdc via www.readwriteweb.com
Hm, Tweet lifetime of attention around an hour.
Methinks it's due to the way people follow. For example, we've noticed that Facebook posts peter out after about two days. But I bet the power curve is more like 24 hours.
And knowing the Facebook pattern, I never thought of what the pattern would be in other channels. With this new piece of data, it clear (d'oh, and so obvious) that the way once follows a stream affects the lifetime of a "quanta" withing a stream.
Thinking of YouTube, you have a high degree of promotion of videos and also folks searching for videos, which might explain why a video I made two years ago is still gaining tens of thousands of views a month - it feeds itself and grows.
Now I'll be looking at stream design in a new light.
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