Hashtag Popularity on Twitter: Analyzing Co-occurrence of Multiple Hashtags

Hashtags increase the reachability of a tweet to manifolds and consequently, has the potential to create a wider market for brands. The frequent use of a hashtag features it in the Twitter trending list. In this study we want to understand what contributes to the popularity of a hashtag. Further, hashtags generally come in groups in a tweet. In fact, an investigation on a real world dataset of Great Eastern Japan Earthquake reveals that 50% of hashtags appear in a tweet with at least another hashtag. How this co-occurrence of hashtags affects its popularity is also not addressed heretofore, which is the focus herein. Results indicate that if a hashtag appears with one or more other similar hashtags, popularity of the hashtag increases. In contrast, if a hashtag appears with dissimilar hashtags, popularity of the focal hashtag decreases. The results reverse when dissimilar hashtags come along with a URL.