How you post is who you are: characterizing Google+ status updates across social groups

Abstract

The analysis of user-generated content on the Web provides tools to

better understand users' behavior and to the development of improved Web

services. Here, we consider a large dataset of Google+ status updates

to evaluate linguistic features among members of distinct social groups. Our study reveals that groups hold linguistic particularities - such as a tendency to use professional vocabulary, suggesting that Google+ might be employed, by certain users, for professional activities, or that members do not dissociate from their jobs when interacting in this environment. To illustrate a possible application of our outcomes, we present a classification experiment aiming to infer users' social information through the analysis of their posts, with satisfactory preliminary results. Our findings help to understand not only collective peculiarities of online social media users, but also important characteristics of the textual genre post, being one of the first and most comprehensive studies on this topic.