January 3, 2011 05:42
Do celebrities exert social media influence? A study conducted by Northwestern University reveals that celebrities like Stephen Fry, Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, Lady GaGa with hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers have very little social media influence.
The research conducted by Professor Alok Choudhary, of Northwestern University, used sophisticated algorithms to calculate daily tweet trends and create mathematical models based on their life-cycle. The research found that experts, people widely recognized as reliable source of information on a particular field, are more likely to influence Twitter trends than non-experts, including celebrities.
The results of Professor Choudhary’s research, confirm the finding of Sysomos, a social media analysis company, which claimed the same a few months earlier.
Even Justine Bieber, who was credited with controlling 3% of Twitter’s server space at any given time, didn’t fare much to sway results in favor of celebrities. The study categorically states that generic celebrity comments have little influence on molding Twitter trends. The failure of Alicia Keys sponsored “Keep A Child Alive" project earlier in December can also be consider a testament of how little authority celebrities exert via social media platforms.
The full results of Northwestern’s project can be obtained by visiting Pulse of the Tweeters.
