• x
Welcome to your feed.
Often it has tweets that can be considered "viral."
But there are many definitions of virality.
We defined a "viral" tweet as one that has at least 5x the engagement (likes, retweets, replies) of the author's typical tweet.
@StateFarm02/12/2023

We manifested that State Farm red, Rihanna. Epic! #SuperBowl

6
10
@Wendys02/13/2023

Where's the beef?

1250
411
@cxrtezs04/23/2023

Nvm = you should have listened when i was talking to u.

63
21.1k
@MTA03/29/2023

Tomorrow is the big day, @Yankees fans! ⚾️ Pitch your travel advice to your fellow fans, what's the best way to get to the home opener? 🏟️

0
5
We then narrowed that group down to tweets that had at least
99800
likes.
100% < 100,000 likes
69% Viral
33% > 1,000,000
67% Entertainment
31% Non-Viral
38% < 1,000,000
19% Sports
21% < 100,000
14% News
8% < 5,000
Out of the billions of tweets from January 2023, only 4,933 had more than 100,000 likes. That's almost none!
From the 4,933 total tweets, 3,402 fit our definition of "viral."
Around 1/3 of "viral" tweets were authored by users with more than 1,000,000 followers.
They also came from a number of different categories.
Here is the distribution of our 3,402 "viral" tweets from around the world during January 2023. Each day's segment is colored according to the number of tweets on scale: . January 18th had the smallest number of tweets (37) tweets, while January 1st had the largest (166). We also selected a few to spotlight!

@CollinRugg01/01/2023

BREAKING: Elon Musk announces that the Fauci Files will be released later this week.

643
16.2

Collin Rugg

01/01/2023

@04Andrey01/07/2023

Now. I'm blue! 🔵

1365
8695

Andrey Santos

01/07/2023

@bizarrap01/10/2023

MIÉRCOLES @shakira || BZRP Music Session #53 🇦🇷🇨🇴

48.1k
57.2k

Bizarrap

01/10/2023

@atre_ahre01/14/2023

Este perrito fue adoptado de una perrera y esta fue su reacción con su nueva familia

5956
28.4k

atr ahre

01/14/2023

@SaeedDiCaprio01/20/2023

this was the fastest I’ve gotten blocked in my life

477
25.1k

Hurt CoPain

01/20/2023

@2525_pc_01/24/2023

京都駅が雪に対して欠陥構造すぎておもろい

4655
59.6k

2525🍎@健全SJK

01/24/2023

@jaxajueny01/30/2023

people who wake up at 5 am love to talk about how productive their day was but forget to mention the psychotic episode they have around 6pm

3447
14.4k

Taurus Girl

01/30/2023

Sports
News
Entertainment
Let's dive into one of these tweets!


Select a category to get started.
Since you did not select a category, we selected Sports category for you. Within this category, @TomBrady tweeted this:
@TomBrady02/03/2023

Now that I’m retired I have time to go see @80forBrady four separate times today.

2923
4788
We're going to visualize how this tweet spread on Twitter's platform.
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  • We showed you the users that together made the tweet "viral."
  •  But how did Twitter itself aide in the journey?
  •  Twitter and other social media platforms interpret many aspects of a given tweet to define its engagement score, and then use that numeric score to rank it within the user's feed.
  •  As hinted by the name, the user's predicted probability of replying, retweeting or liking the tweet are factored in when ranking the tweet.
  •  There are also less obvious aspects of the tweet that can be used.
  •  For example, Twitter revealed they factor in user's probability of opening the author's profile (and further engage with other tweets) into their ranking.
  •  Obviously, this tweet was highly ranked for many of the users across the platform.
@TomBrady02/03/2023

Now that I’m retired I have time to go see @80forBrady four separate times today.

2923
4788
But such ranking is intended to accomodate amplification of content that is deemed engagement worthy for the user. There is also demotion within the platform for content that is deemed problematic.
@StateFarm02/12/2023

We manifested that State Farm red, Rihanna. Epic! #SuperBowl

6
10
@Wendys02/13/2023

Where's the beef?

1250
411
@cxrtezs04/23/2023

Nvm = you should have listened when i was talking to u.

63
21.1k
@MetroBoomin04/24/2022

I Love You Mom. ❤️🌈❤️

595
8227
What would happen if @TomBrady's tweet were demoted?


Demotion generally works by lowering a particular tweet in your feed. The lower the tweet is in your feed, the less likely you are to see it and engage with it.
Select the level of demotion for @TomBrady's tweet to visualize
Low
Medium
High
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Click below to check out tweets from the other categories!
Built by
Sahil Patel & Samia Menon
References
Data (Data Link)
  • Viral Tweets
    • Query + "Viral" Confirmation
      • Twitter Official API v2
      • Twitter Advanced Search
    • Author and Tweet Details
      • Twitter Official API v1.1
    • Categories
      • Twitter Official API v2
      • Twitter Hidden APIs
  • Network Tweets
    • Twitter Official API v2
    • Twitter Official API v1.1

Website (Github Link)
  • Main Visual
    • P5
    • Papa Parse
  • UI
    • React JS
    • React Intersection Observer
    • React Use Measure
    • React Responsive Carousel
  • Animations
    • Framer Motion
Also check out the accompanying article on the subject.