Twitter Data Introduction

Twitter’s API allows us to collect data and gives us the ability to compare and contrast, really anything you are interested in. For this assignment, I chose to look into the popularity of Chick-fil-a versus Raising Canes. I excluded retweets in the data because I wanted to look into the original tweets and replies for each of the fast food chain restaurants. I wanted to see if people were talking about one or the other more and I looked into several things to help with this. On top of seeing if one is popular that the other, I wanted to ask several questions to see if I could come to a conclusion. These questions are:

  1. Does one have more tweets throughout the day?
  2. Does the place where the tweet comes from matter?
  3. Are there certain hashtags that people are using?
  4. Is there one account that is driving the number of tweets for one or the other?

Timeline Data

The first thing that I was curious about was the number of tweets that each fast food chain has over the course of the tweets that were collected. I looked into an hourly timeline because I thought it would be the best interval to choose to represent the data and gain a better picture of that is happening. I looked into this question because I thought that it would allow me to gage the general amount of interaction that each account gets on a daily basis.

The first timeline is for Chick-fil-a. The first thing that I want to note is that the number of tweets never hints zero, no matter what time of day it is. Another thing is that they reach over 100 tweets during the day several times, only having one day where it does not hit this mark, but is still very close to that 100 tweets threshold. One thing that I found interesting about this is that the date they had the least number of tweets was not a Sunday, the only day they are closed, but rather a Tuesday. The final thing worth noting about the Chick-fil-a timeline is that there is a constant trend from day to day. They start off slow in the morning, have a constant rise throughout the day, hit a peak, fall slowly, rise again toward the peak, and then slowly fall as the night comes.

The timeline for Raising Canes is a little bit more chaotic. This was the first thing that I noticed when looking at it in comparison to the Chick-fil-A timeline. The second thing that I noticed was the number of tweets that Raising Canes has throughout the day. Their highest number of tweets is just over 15 and is constantly below this number over these days, when the tweets were collected. Raising Canes does not seem to perform very well on Twitter and does not create a lot of interaction or interest throughout the day.

Comparing the two different timelines, it is clear that Chick-fil-a has more popularity when it comes to the number of tweets throughout the day. Chick-fil-a has a massive advantage over this number because Raising Canes never really gets over 15 tweets during the day.

Top 10 Places that Tweets Come From

Next, I wanted to see if the two chain restaurants were more popular in one place or another and if they both had the same number for their highest ones. I looked into this question, mainly, to see if one place account for most of the tweets or if they are more sporatic locations. I took the top 10 places for each restaurant to see if there is a significant difference. From looking at both tables, I did not find a major difference in popularity for the two. However, the top place for both of them is Los Angeles, CA. Chick-fil-a has 7 tweets as opposed to Raising Canes 3 tweets. You can say that this makes Chick-fil-a more popular but it is hard to tell only from one location. My final thought on the tables for where these tweets are from is that Raising Canes has a lot that only have one tweet, whereas Chick-fil-a has multiple tweets for each location that are in the top 10.

Top Hashtags Used

Hashtags are commonly used today on Twitter and help paint a picture of what someone is talking about even if they do not use one of the two fast food restaurants directly in their tweet but rather as a hashtag. I want to see if there were hashtags came up more often than not and see if they were positive or negative.

It comes as no surprise that the top hashtag for each restaurant is simply their name. From the tables, people have more interest in using hashtags when tweeting about Chick-fil-a, as the most used hashtag for Raising Canes is tied with the sixth most used hashtag for Chick-fil-a. Chick-fil-a has 29 tweets and Raising Canes has only 6 tweets. The hashtags that are used for both restaurants are mostly positive expect for a few. Both have hashtags of #diarrhea, #nausea, and #vomiting. These hashtags not only appear in both tables but also have roughly the same number of tweets for each. The only glaring difference between the two is the hashtag that is used for each of their names. This number is also deceptive because Chick-fil-a has multiple hastags with their name in them, with the only difference being letters that are capitalized or not. Chick-fil-a has the advantage in popularity when it comes to what hashtags are used and what those hashtags are.

Top Accounts for Each Chain Restaurant

The final question that I wanted to ask is if there were accounts that were driving up the number of tweets for each restaurant. So, I took a look into the top 10 accounts with the most tweets for each restaurant. Chick-fil-a has an account called @Charliesnotabot that tweeted 78 times. This number could include most replies and not necessarily original tweets. However, this makes me think that this account is a bot because the next highest account only has 12 tweets. This is a significant difference between the highest and second highest accounts. This also calls into question the popularity that Chick-fil-a really has and if their number of tweets relies on this bot or others.

Raising Canes’s top account has only has 5 tweets over the course that the data was taken. They did not really have an account that stuck out as an outlier and seemed to have reliable accounts. Overall, I do not think that the accounts and the number of tweets determine the popularity of the accounts.

Final Conclusion

Not only did I find things that helped determine if one was popular over the other, I also found variables that do not necessarily play a factor in their popularity. Those are place of the tweet and the account and the number of tweets or replies that they have. Place does not matter because there is not one place for either that has a significant amount of tweets more than the other. Account and the number of tweets that they have also does not matter because the top for each one is relatively close, only being off by 5 tweets, excluding the @Charliesnotabot account. These do not help explain popularity but provide more insight into the tweets and replies that people are making for the two fast food chain restaurants.

However, after looking into all of the data for both, Chick-fil-a and Canes, I have determined that Chick-fil-a has more popularity on Twitter. This can be seen in the timeline data with the major significance in the number of tweets through out the day and the lack of tweets for Raising Canes. The other thing that I found to help determine popularity are the hashtags that people use. Chick-fil-a has their name used more as a hashtag that Raising Canes and is their top hashtag that is used throughout the tweets that were collected.