Twitter: 50% of the tweet is from the 0.05% of users [translation case study]

As already reported by Mashable and Vincos, a study of Yahoo Research showcases how an elite group of users to produce more traffic on the social network of chirps. This elite group of 20,000 users of Twitter has been found through the use of lists.
  
Here is a partial translation of the paper:
Were used to distinguish between lists of Twitter users divided between an elite of celebrities, bloggers, media, organizations and even ordinary users. Based on this system was discovered that half of the tweet consumed in social networks are generated by 20,000 people, where the media are the major producers of information, but celebrities are the most closely watched.
There is also a significant homophily between categories: celebrities listen to celebrities, bloggers listen to bloggers etc; ricomunicano bloggers in general (so retwittano or publish the source) information much more than other categories (on this issue in the paper c 'is a chapter devoted to two-step flow of communication that Twitter is fertile field, ed.)
Another interesting fact is that the duration or lifetime of a tweet from these elites. It was noted that in fact those in the media last for relatively little, while those from bloggers last much longer.
In addition theoretic setting there are two types of sample, a snowball (or cascading) and an activity-based.

Snowball sampleAt the core of a snowball sample were strong representatives of the above categories:

• Celebrity: Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, Paris Hilton
• Media: CNN, New York Times
• Organizations: Amnesty International, World Wildlife Foundation, Yahoo Inc., Whole Foods?

Blogs: BoingBoing, FamousBloggers, ProBlogger, Mashable. Chrisbrogan, virtuosoblogger, Gizmodo, Ileana, dragonblogger, bbrian017, hishaman, Copyblogger, en-gadget, danielscocco, BlazingMinds, bloggersblog, Ty-coonBlogger, Shoemoney, wchingya, extremejohn, GrowMap, kikolani, smartbloggerz, Element321, branding donacox, remarkablogger, jsinkeywest, seosmarty, No-tAProBlog, kbloemendaal, JimiJones, ditesco
Hit lists associated with this base, were chosen by hand based on the representativeness of the keywords in categories you want, and the lack of overlap between the categories:

• Celebrities: star, stars, hollywood, celebs, celebrity, celebrities, and celebsveri, celebrity-list celebrities-on-twitter, celebrity-tweets
• Media: news, media, news media?
• Organizations: company, companies, organization, organization, Organizations, Organisations, corporations, brands, products, charity, charities, Causes, causes, ngo
• Blogs: blog, blogs, bloggers, bloggers

  

As a result there has been a skimming to establish a list of lists in which to place those names that appeared in several lists (creating ambiguity) bringing in only those categories in which that name had the highest membership score.

Sample based on the activity

To compensate for errors due to the choices of a snowball sample, it was decided to generate a sample based on the activities of Twitter users. In the present case have been traced all the lists associated with users who tweeted at least once each week for the entire period of observation. Although this sample has critical than those who make heavy use of Twitter.

We noticed that the number of lists obtained by this method is less than that obtained with the sample to snowball and that bloggers are much more present than the other three categories.

It 's interesting to note that 85% of those who are present in the sample based on the activities can also be found in the sample snowball suggesting that the two sampling methods to identify the same user population "elite ".

Continue reading suggests that bloggers / reporters / influential people are required more attention, as it interacts better and perhaps more naturally in the flow of information and are the most retwittati, while there is a sharp drop in media attention.

It is here that come into play the two-phase flow of communication Lazarsfeld et al and the study of media effects of Lasswell:

For Lasswell, every act of communication involves the following questions:

• chi (broadcaster)
• says what (message content)
• through which channel (medium)
• to whom (audience, the public)
• with what effect (impact of communication)

A feature of this theory was the asymmetry of roles (in this case blogger / media Vs general users) where the issuer plays an active role in the message produces effects on the mass (which Lasswell considered passive). These effects should be targeted and then took the measured and analyzed.

The theory of Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet then places a strong emphasis on interpersonal relationship where trust and reputation play an important role.

Ultimately, someone is against the use of nonostatante Twtitter for PR and social media marketing, you can implement strategies taking into account the activities of opinion leaders and engaging in a conversation with them.

Moreover, notes the article by Mashable is possible to think that Twitter can be transformed (if it already is) in an outlet of information sharing.