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What the source device reveals about tweets
Archive note
This post is preserved as a historical note about Twitter metadata. Twitter/X behavior, API access, labels, and public-client data have changed substantially since it was written, so this should not be treated as current platform documentation.
One little known but very informative aspect of the Twitter API is that you are able to see the name of the device, or the app, that posted each tweet on any given user’s account.
On the surface this sounds benign, but what it can reveal about some people can sometimes be very insightful.
Let’s start with the obvious:
Donald Trump
It is publicy known that Donald Trump only uses an Android device. This gives us a degree of certainty in saying that all the tweets, and only the tweets sent from this device were personally written by him. And if you compare Android vs all other device types’ tweets, the difference is indeed night and day:
Hillary Clinton
Looking at Hillary Clinton’s account it would appear her primary device of choice is the iPhone. Her most emotional, personal messages tend to exclusively come from this device.
The vast majority of the tweets from TweetDeck on this account are either quoting things Hillary Clinton said, or they are quoting other sources. This appears to be the main client that her aides use.
Interestingly the Web Client is almost exclusively used for retweets. 99% of all retweets come from this client.
Her famous 3-0 tweet appears to have been posted by her personally: [screenshot] but curiously her delete your account tweet [screenshot] was actually sent from TweetDeck, leading credence that this was a calculated and discussed tweet that was then tweeted by her aides.
Elon Musk
He once stated that he writes his own tweets, and this appears entirely true. The only device that has ever posted to his twitter account is the iPhone, presumably his personal property.
Tim Cook
With a grand total of 2 tweets sent from OS X, 6 from the web, 17 from the iPad and 75 from his iPhone it’s clear which platform he prefers. Could this platform favoritism go some way to explaining the neglect of the Mac Pro? A device being sold by a company which the CEO himself doesn’t tend to use is bound to have a higher chance of being overlooked as time goes on.