What Makes Content Interesting
Much research attention has gone into investigating what
makes content in an online community interesting to its members, that is, what they pay attention to. Two primary contexts
in which these investigations have been done are discussion
forums and Twitter.
For discussion forums, this problem takes the form of understanding and predicting what types of posts are most likely
to receive replies. In a series of studies conducted on Usenet
newsgroups, researchers from CMU investigated properties
of the post, poster, and the newsgroup itself that influenced
likelihood of reply. Early findings included: writing explicit
requests, including personal “testimonials” relating one’s
connection to the group, and staying on-topic increased the
probability of receiving a reply; and newcomers to a group
were less likely to receive a reply than more established members [1]. There were several follow-ups to this work. Burke