Twitter Follow Graph, August 2009 (MPI-SWS, ICWSM 2010)
The follow graph of Twitter shared by the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) for the study "Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy" (ICWSM 2010): 1,963,263,821 directed follow links among 52,579,682 accounts, with account IDs anonymised, so the file carries structure only, and a table of the number of new adopters per day of seven retweeting conventions (RT, via, Retweeting, Retweet, HT, R/T and the recycling symbol) over 883 days. 43,983,853 accounts follow at least one account and 49,395,940 are followed by at least one. The page that publishes the data says it is based on the Twitter network snapshot of September 2009 and that the tweet information is not shared.
Cite this dataset at
mpi-sws-twitter-2009.echo.directory
Analytics
The full graph has 52,579,682 nodes; this view shows the 1,000-node sample the pipeline drew for display. Node size is centrality, colour is community.
- 1RT
- 2via
- 3Retweeting
- 4Retweet
- 5HT
- 6R/T
- 7recycle
- RT
- via
- Retweeting
- Retweet
- HT
- R/T
- recycle
Record
- Catalog key
mpi-sws-twitter-2009- Authors
- Cha, Meeyoung; Haddadi, Hamed; Benevenuto, Fabrício; Gummadi, Krishna P.
- Year
- 2010
- Source paper
- Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy
- DOI / arXiv
- 10.1609/icwsm.v4i1.14033
- License
- Research use (MPI-SWS); anonymised link structure only (LicenseRef-Research-Only)
- Records
- 52,579,682
- Nodes
- 52,579,682
- Edges
- 1,963,263,821 (directed)
- Nodes are
- user (anonymised id)
- Edges are
- follow (follower -> followed)
- Attributes
- nodes have no attributes; edges have no attributes
- Languages
- en
- Collected
- August 2009 (2000s)
- Tasks
- From the graph: link prediction, community detection
- Region
- Global (inferred: the platform is used worldwide)
Provenance
- Originally published at
- http://twitter.mpi-sws.org/ link checked
- Original files as received
- The source files, unconverted, kept for reference: mirrored on echo.directory on 2026-10-21, 10.7 GB across 2 files. Checksums in MANIFEST.json. For use, start with the data package below.
- Data package
- Version 1.0.0 of this dataset as an ECHO Data Package: edges (1,963,263,821 rows), x_retweet_adopters (6,181 rows).
- Structure
- Directed network
Citations
Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy
Meeyoung Cha, H. Haddadi, Fabrício Benevenuto, Krishna P. Gummadi
Journal Article · International Conference on Web and Social Media · 2010
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Citation data from Semantic Scholar, retrieved 2026-10-22.
How to cite
BibTeX
@misc{echo2026,
title = {ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online},
author = {Switzer, Braden and Zafarani, Reza},
year = {2026},
url = {https://echo.directory},
note = {Syracuse University}
}
@inproceedings{cha2010measuring,
title = {Measuring User Influence in {T}witter: The Million Follower Fallacy},
author = {Cha, Meeyoung and Haddadi, Hamed and Benevenuto, Fabr{\'i}cio and Gummadi, Krishna P.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 4th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM)},
year = {2010},
doi = {10.1609/icwsm.v4i1.14033}
} APA
Switzer, B., & Zafarani, R. (2026). ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online [Data repository]. Syracuse University. https://echo.directory
Cha, M., Haddadi, H., Benevenuto, F., & Gummadi, K. P. (2010). Twitter Follow Graph, August 2009 (MPI-SWS, ICWSM 2010) [Data set]. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v4i1.14033
MLA
Switzer, Braden, and Reza Zafarani. ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online. Syracuse University, 2026, echo.directory.
Cha, Meeyoung, et al. Twitter Follow Graph, August 2009 (MPI-SWS, ICWSM 2010). 2010, doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v4i1.14033.