What if Twitter wasn’t the fastest one…
by Luca on 24/02/11 at 7:40 pm
[Italiano] We have recently done some comparative analysis between Twitter propagation dynamics and FriendFeed propagation dynamics. We chose, as our case study, the news related to the rescue operations of the San Josè mining accident (that left 33 men trapped 700 metres (2,300 ft) below ground for 69 days) [I'm not describing the research now, we have a paper under submission.. so stay tuned for more about the research itself].
As a side product of this research we had the opportunity to monitor the audience exposed to the miner’s rescue news both on Friendfeed and on Twitter. We were therefore able to observe how fast a specific news spreaded through both the networsk and, since we are observing the same news, we can assume that different propagation speeds can be related to the different propagation mechanisms taking place into the two systems.
Even considering the huge difference in absolute numbers (Twitter has a larger number of users) the line of FriendFeed based propagation (Esposti FF) is steeper and shows a less linear progression than Twitter’s line (Esposti TW).
This seems to suggest that a propagation based largely on the interactions made by the people you follow is faster than a propagation based mostly on explicit re-sharing practices (ReTweets).
