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Quantifying the impact of online social networks on the success of entrepreneurs

Author

Listed:
  • Vitalis, Kyriacos

    (University of Cyprus)

  • Stefanidis, Dimosthenis
  • Pallis, George
  • Dikaiakos, Marios
  • Nicolaou, Nicos
  • Nicolaides, Christos

    (University of Cyprus)

Abstract

We leverage a rich online social network and entrepreneurial performance dataset to identify the effect of entrepreneurs’ social network activity on their professional success. We focus our analysis on ~79K founders of organizations listed in Crunchbase with an active personal Twitter account. We employ Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) multiple linear regression, where the dependent variable is the founder’s career success indicator as extracted from Crunchbase, and the predictor variables are the social network presence and activity indicators as extracted from Twitter. We find that the founder’s average annual number of tweets is negatively associated with different success indicators, demonstrating a significant adverse impact of mere tweeting on success. To address endogeneity concerns, we implement panel data analysis with Fixed Effects (FE) and Instrumental Variables (IV) by the means of Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regression, the results of which are largely consistent with those of OLS main analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Vitalis, Kyriacos & Stefanidis, Dimosthenis & Pallis, George & Dikaiakos, Marios & Nicolaou, Nicos & Nicolaides, Christos, 2024. "Quantifying the impact of online social networks on the success of entrepreneurs," OSF Preprints x6vda, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:x6vda
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/x6vda
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