• John Breslin
• Wed, 05/05/2010 - 09:23
• Comments

The Irish Twitter users who received the most replies from other Irish users during the study.

A research project by John Conroy, a Masters student supervised by Josephine Griffith at NUI Galway, has gathered some interesting statistics on Twitter usage and the most tweeted users in Ireland (during February / March 2010).

The study acquired 307,168 tweets from a group of Irish Twitter users. These tweets yielded 93,022 resolvable replies (@someuser), and another 7,298 retweets. Therefore, a third of the tweets investigated contained either a reply to another user or a retweet. Of the 93,022 resolvable replies, the vast majority were directed at users external to the Irish group. 15,364 replies (16.5%) were directed at an Irish user, and 77,658 (83.5%) at a user outside of Ireland. (Just over 2,000 investigated tokens were spoiled, often due to typos or e-mail addresses being detected as replies.)

The most replied-to Irish account was @planetjedward (pop stars), followed by @thescript (a band), @Dublins98Dave (a radio presenter), @darraghdoyle (community manager at boards.ie), @rayfoleyshow (another radio presenter), and @damienmulley (an online PR consultant).

Of the total set of users that the Irish replied to, @addthis, a link sharing service, topped the list, followed by pop stars @MrPeterAndre and @mileycyrus, and the unclassifiable @stephenfry.

Who the Irish replied to most (including international Twitter users).

Retweets accounted for a much smaller portion: about 2.5% of the total set of tweets, or about 7.5% of tweets that referenced other users. The most retweeted Irish user was @marklittlenews (a journalist and former RTE presenter). @tweetmeme, a link tracking service for Twitter, was the most retweeted user by the Irish usergroup.

Who the Irish retweeted most (including international Twitter users).

(You can follow both John Conroy and Josephine Griffith on Twitter as well. I've saved some of the top user lists using Many Eyes.)