Extending the Network: the Influence of Offline Friendship to Twitter Network

Twitter effectively provides a communication platform that allows users to strengthen or augment relationships with their close ones. It is a common scene to see groups of people in continuing group communication from offline to online using tools such as Twitter. Furthermore, it is also possible to meet new friends via online encounter. Under these circumstances, there would be friends who are both offline and online, or only in online. Many of earlier Twitter network studies focused on the network effects’ direction going from online to offline network. This paper explores the opposite direction, going from offline to online network. It investigates the peer’s friendly relationship intricacies that emerge when a known friendly offline relationship influences its subsequently established Twitter online relationship. An empirical data set of 2,193 pairs of Twitter user accounts were examined.

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