Klout, the social influence measuring tool, has analysed a week’s worth of retweet data and unsurprisingly concluded that the lifespan of a tweet is significantly longer for users with higher Klout scores – up to 67 times longer.

Klout measures the lifespan of a tweet as the point at which half of all retweets have occurred before a certain point and half of which have occurred after this – the half-life of a tweet.

For users with a Klout score of between 40-70, half of all retweets occur within 5 minutes of the initial tweet. With a Klout score of between 70-75 a tweet’s half-life is 25 minutes, between 75-80 a tweet’s half-life is 165 minutes, between 80-85 a tweet’s half-life is 315 minutes and a Klout score of between 85-90 will result in a tweet half-life of 335 minutes.

Interestingly, the study finds that with a Klout score of between 0-40, tweets can expect a half-life of 25 minutes, 20 minutes longer than those with a Klout score of between 40-70 and equal to those with a Klout score of between 70-75.

To help put this into perspective, the Klout score of an average Twitter user is 20. Our own Klout score is 48 apparently.

The half-life of a tweet

4 thoughts on “Lifespan of a tweet and Klout score directly linked

  1. In regards to those with 0-40 Klout scores having a higher half-life, the people who follow people with low Klout scores probably follow very few people. It’s much more likely that someone following 40 people will see a tweet from 25 minutes ago when they first log on than someone following 500 people will.

  2. In regards to those with 0-40 Klout scores having a higher half-life, the people who follow people with low Klout scores probably follow very few people. It’s much more likely that someone following 40 people will see a tweet from 25 minutes ago when they first log on than someone following 500 people will.

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