20,000 elite users, comprising less than .05% of the user population, attract almost 50% of all attention within Twitter -

20,000 elite users, comprising less than .05% of the user population, attract almost 50% of all attention within Twitter - 

Elites are alive and well in social media.

A tiny proportion of Twitter users generate the bulk of new content, and users tend to ignore most tweets that fall outside their field of interest, a new study has found.

In fact, “20,000 elite users, comprising less than 0.05 per cent of the user population, attract almost 50 per cent of all attention within Twitter,” the study released Tuesday by a team of New York State-based researchers from Cornell University and Yahoo! Research reads.

A thorough analysis of 260 million tweets containing URLs sent between July, 2009 and March, 2010, confirmed this relatively new communications tool mimics old-school media such as newspapers and television in how it disseminates news and information.

Researchers quickly realized that “Twitter more closely remembered an information sharing network than a social network.” The information sharing works as a snowball, gathering an ever wider audience as users pass tweets along to their friends.

Dividing tweeters into four categories – celebrities, media, organizations and bloggers – the research team followed the cascade of information and realized that the majority of re-tweets remain within the same category.

“Celebrities overwhelmingly pay attention to other celebrities,” the report states.

The exception to this conclusion comes from the blogging community, which is most disposed to pick through other categories for re-tweeting.

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http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1064261--elite-tweets-rule-social-media-universe