I previously speculated on what it means when you don’t like your friends’ friends. Now to take it one step further, what does it mean when you belong to a Twitter cycle?  Unlike facebook and other social-networking sites, Twitter is a directed graph:  you follow your friends but they don’t have to follow you.  A cycle is a chain of Twitters that loops back on itself:  i.e. 1 follows 2, 2 follows 3,…,n-1 follows n, n follows 1.

What does it say about you and your friends if you follow Jane, who doesn’t folow you but instead follows her friend Jack, who doesnt follow Jane but instead follows you?

Anyone belong to a Twitter cycle?  What is the largest Twitter cycle?

If we start with an arbitrary Twitter user and “move up” the graph from followers to leaders (follow-ees?) we must eventually either hit a cycle or a single user who sits on top of his domain.  Who are these people?

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