Unlocking the power of Twitter communities for startups

Applied Network Science

Research

Fernando Batista¹  Ricardo Ribeiro¹  Elsa Cardoso²  Ana Rita Peixoto³  Ana de Almeida⁴  Nuno António⁵ 

[1] Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal;INESC-ID Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal;Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal;INESC-ID Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal;CIES-Iscte, Lisbon, Portugal;Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal;Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), ISTAR, Lisbon, Portugal;Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal;Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), ISTAR, Lisbon, Portugal;CISUC, Coimbra, Portugal;NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus de Campolide, 1070-312, Lisboa, Portugal;Desenvolvimento e Inovação em Turismo, CITUR, Centro de Investigação, Faro, Portugal;

关键词: Twitter data;    Communities;    Social media;    Startups;   

DOI  :  10.1007/s41109-023-00593-0

 received in 2023-06-14, accepted in 2023-09-13,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Social media platforms offer cost-effective digital marketing opportunities to monitor the market, create user communities, and spread positive opinions. They allow companies with fewer budgets, like startups, to achieve their goals and grow. In fact, studies found that startups with active engagement on those platforms have a higher chance of succeeding and receiving funding from venture capitalists. Our study explores how startups utilize social media platforms to foster social communities. We also aim to characterize the individuals within these communities. The findings from this study underscore the importance of social media for startups. We used network analysis and visualization techniques to investigate the communities of Portuguese IT startups through their Twitter data. For that, a social digraph has been created, and its visualization shows that each startup created a community with a degree of intersecting followers and following users. We characterized those users using user node-level measures. The results indicate that users who are followed by or follow Portuguese IT startups are of these types: “Person”, “Company,” “Blog,” “Venture Capital/Investor,” “IT Event,” “Incubators/Accelerators,” “Startup,” and “University.” Furthermore, startups follow users who post high volumes of tweets and have high popularity levels, while those who follow them have low activity and are unpopular. The attained results reveal the power of Twitter communities and offer essential insights for startups to consider when building their social media strategies. Lastly, this study proposes a methodological process for social media community analysis on platforms like Twitter.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

【 图 表 】

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