Could the Twitter-Medium Become as Big as Television?

First Posted: Jul 26, 2013 12:05 AM EDT
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A new study suggests that Twitter could be hitting be bigger than television in years to come.  

According to researchers at the Columbia Business School and the University of Pittsburgh, the Twitter social network has more than 500 million registered users.

Scientists, therefore, hope to provide a 140-character-limit comment regarding research of study co-authors Assistant Professor Andrew T. Stephen of the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia Business School Professor Olivier Toubia.

"Get ready for a TV-like Twitter," Toubia said, via a press release.

To put their theory into prattice, researchers examined the motivations behind exactly why everyday inviduals with no specific financial incentives would contribute to Twitter.

Twenty-five hundred non-commercial Twitter users were studied. Colleagues randomly selected some of these users and through the use of other synthetic accounts, they increased the selected group's follower's, according to the study. Initially, researchers noted that as the selected group's followers increased, so did the posting rate. However, this changed with the level of stature.

"Users began to realize it was harder to continue to attract more followers with their current strategy, so they slowed down," Toubia added, via the release. "When posting activity no longer leads to additional followers, people will view Twitter as a non-evolving, static structure, like TV."

Based on the experiment, researchers believe that posts by everyday individuals will decrease while celebrities and commercial users may contribute more for personal or financial gain.

"Twitter will become less of a communications vehicle and more of a content-delivery vehicle, much like TV. Peer-to-peer contact is likely to evolve to the next great thing, but with 500 million followers, Twitter isn't just going to disappear. It's just going to become a new way to follow celebrities, corporations, and the like," Toubia said, via the release.

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found in the journal Marketing Science

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