Tweets I've seen: analysing factors influencing re-finding frustration on Twitter

Abstract

While social networking and microblogging platforms have received considerable research attention, little work has been done to understand how users preserve, manage and reaccess content they acquire from these sources. In this paper we present initial analyses of a large-scale survey (n=606) to understand Personal Information Management (PIM) practices with social networking and microblogging systems, and Twitter in particular. Our results indicate that re-finding information in tweets is a common Twitter activity and can be frustrating. Using questionnaire responses, we investigate the influence of several factors, including how the user tends to preserve tweets of interest, and the level of frustration involved in re-finding such tweets when they are required later.