"Happy, positive" messages key to success on Twitter

Scientists have discovered the secret to becoming popular on micro-blogging site Twitter. C.J. Hutto and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta examined the content and re-tweeting fate of tweets sent by 500 non-celebrities over a 15-month period.

They looked for 2800 terms that convey positive and negative emotions, including slang and swear words, a set of emoticons and common acronyms like LOL. The keys to success,they found,were to tweet positive messages,write clearly and re-tweet interesting titbits of news. People who tweeted mostly about themselves didn't fare so well.

The study suggests it is the content of the tweets that has the biggest impact on the size of Twitter audience. Hutto said how engaged people are with their followers also matters.Readability was also key, he added. The researchers will present their findings at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris, France, in April.

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