For my informants, Twitter was the primary way in which they immersed themselves in the current concerns of the tech scene. They used it to follow real-life friends and acquaintances in the field as well as high-status tech people and celebrities. Further, because individual tweets are typically viewed within a Twitter stream comprised of other people's tweets, the roles of follower and broadcaster blend, forming an aggregate social context. Then as today, this context is rich with social information about relationships, mores, customs, and trends, and thus provides more information than the sum of its parts. For instance, looking at how the tech scene defined acceptable Twitter use reveals the key role that Twitter followers played in determining status in the community.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 231