The rich get richer: Extroverts' social capital on twitter

Abstract

Previous studies have associated social capital to one's social networks. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have looked at the interplay between one's personality, twitter activity, and number of twitter followers; with his or her social capital. Therefore, this research paper examined a correlation between these dimensions, to see if potentially people with different personalities have different benefits from their Twitter based activity.Social capital was measured by a survey (N = 218), and number of Twitter followings was analyzed based on the social ties of participants on Twitter (these data were collected using a script developed for this purpose).Our findings indicate that there is a correlation between the frequency of Twitter use, extroversion and perceived online bridging social capital of users. In other words, extroverts gain more online social capital through their online followings (when compared to their introvert counterparts); when introverts and extroverts have the same network size, extroverts gain more social capital. Furthermore, when introverts and extroverts have the same network size and also use Twitter more frequently, extroverts gain more social capital.The use of online social networking sites is significant in terms of social capital benefits. Furthermore, our results support the ‘Rich get Richer’ model by showing that people who are social offline benefit from their sociability also online.