Lotan made the graph on this page using the same methodology. It shows responses to a tweet, posted by engineering professor Deb Chachra (@debcha), that resonated especially widely during last summer's riots in Britain. This message spread much more slowly than the bin Laden news, and it spread without the involvement of a widely followed journalist. These differences are reflected in the diffuse shape and smaller clusters of the graph.

Being heard isn't always easy in an age when anyone can become a broadcaster. But analyzing and visualizing such data helps SocialFlow guide customers about how, when, and what they should tweet to have the best chance of disseminating their messages widely.

Note: The orientation of the nodes was determined by a force-directed algorithm, a tool for organizing network graphs to aid visual understanding.