Microblogging in open source software development:the case of Drupal using Twitter

Microblogging is one of the popular forms of social media that has quickly permeated both enterprise and open source communities. However, how exactly open source communities can leverage microblogging is not yet well understood. We investigate how Drupal’s open source community uses Twitter, a household-name in microblogging. Our analysis of group and individual accounts of Drupal developers reveals that they take on similar but distinct roles. Both serve as communicators of essential links to a vast and growing community knowledge base, such as work artifacts, issues, documentation, and blog posts. Community members often express positive emotions when tweeting about work, which reinforces a sense of community. Finally, Twitter is also used as a crowdsourcing channel to solicit contributions.