Airline Routes Are a Pretty Good Predictor of Twitter Connections
Monday, February 27th, 2012
A new study by three Canadian researchers finds that many Twitter connections are either formed between users in the same city, or are between users in cities with frequent airline links between them. The research demonstrates how the Internet follows trends seen in the real world, though it does not explore whether similar relationships also hold with respect to other inter-city networks.
"Of course, this isn’t only because the constant flights provide more opportunities for connection between residents of two distant places; the airline connections are themselves like the Twitter connections — a manifestation of an existing relationship between two places. In this sense, it’s no more surprising that New York and London are well connected on Twitter than it is that they are well connected by air travel."
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