Twitter ‘experimenting with predicting viral tweets’

The Next Web has suggested that a new twitter account @magicstats might be an experiment by Twitter, along the same lines as previous experiments @magicrecs and @eventparrot.

The account – whose bio states that it favourites the best tweets it sees in real time – is protected, but The Next Web says that it if the service predicts a tweet will go viral, it favourites the tweet within a few minutes of it being sent. This apparently leads to a high number of retweets.

The site also claims that the design and wording of the account is similar to that of the previous experiments. Twitter has apparently declined to comment.