MIT: Research shows news coverage accelerates Twitter growth

MIT investigated the "contagion process" of Twitter from 2006 to 2009 and found that Twitter's growth in the United States actually relied mainly on media attention and traditional social networks based on geographical proximity and socioeconomic similarity.

The study's authors used Google Insights for Search to track weekly news stories in Google News searches and found that the rise in Twitter usage coincided with an increase in related news stories.

For example, American Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher once challenged CNN to see who would reach 1 million Twitter followers first. Kutcher won the victory after half an hour and was invited by famous talk show host Oprah Winfrey. As the amount of news reports about Twitter increased, the number of Twitter users also grew.

The survey also highlights the importance of word of mouth in the spread of Twitter. Twitter's early adopters lived in cities near San Francisco and Boston. Young technology fans made Twitter's initial growth, which made the role of cyberspace closer to real life. The newest form of communication is actually one of the oldest.

Marta Gonzalez, one of the authors of the survey, said other surveys generally use the media as a tool, but because the media often responds to people's interests, they attribute it to random growth.