Contacting Twitter users about Tweets

2plus2make5 · 2014-08-31T15:10:11.000Z

I’m a scientist studying social dynamics on Twitter, and I wanted to confirm that it was okay to contact Twitter users if they tweet something I find interesting. For example, I identify users who tweet something controversial and lose followers, and then I want to talk to them to get their perspective on why they tweeted that and why they lost followers. I’m doing this on a very small scale (no automated contacting of users or anything, only a few users at a time) so it doesn’t seem like it should be a problem, but I just wanted to confirm it was concordant with Twitter’s terms of service.

aaronhoff · 2014-09-10T18:51:21.828Z

Hi @2plus2make5, Starting conversations with other users is definitely within our terms and encouraged!

andypiper · 2014-09-11T10:23:10.730Z

As @aaronhoff says - we encourage this!

One thing to be aware of is that if you’re writing an app, we generally recommend against having it auto-DM people, for instance (which you’re acknowledging here - cool beans). The general @reply syntax on Twitter is very conversational though, and so long as you are not being deliberately annoying and accept that some folks may not want to reply or engage with you / your research, you’re welcome to ask!