A cross-sectional and temporal analysis of information consumption on twitter

We report on an exploratory analysis of the similarities and differences among three different forms of information consumption on Twitter viz., following, listing and subscribing. We construct a cross- sectional and temporal framework to analyze the relationships among these three forms. Our analysis reveals several interesting patterns of information consumption on Twitter. First, we find that people not only consume information by following others explicitly but also by listing and subscribing to lists and that the people they list or subscribe to are not the same as the ones they follow. Second, we find that listing and following are more similar to each other than listing and subscribing or subscribing and following. Using temporal analysis, we find that initially, people prefer to use following as a form of information consumption while subscription is a more volatile form of information consumption than following or listing. © (2013) by the AIS/ICIS Administrative Office All rights reserved