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A new study shows how Twitter bots can be used to spread good messages as well as bad. (And that includes messages about your startup.)

Bots have a bad rep. It seems that whether they’re spreading fake news on Twitter or getting you to stay longer on the cheating site Ashley Madison, people just aren’t too found of lines of code pretending to be people. But a recent study reveals the truth behind bots.

Spoiler alert: They’re not all bad.

For this study, researcher Emilio Ferrara and his team developed and deployed 39 Twitter bots targeting Twitter users in San Francisco. They sent their digital minions out into the wild in the second half of 2014 and let them roam free until the end of the year.

But unlike those aforementioned Ashley Madison “sex bots,” Ferrara’s bots were trying to promote positive behavior. After building up a presence on Twitter (and some of the bots got “thousands” of followers, according to the report), they started pushing out positive memes related to public health, fitness, and social good.

So what happened?

First of all, contrary to the belief of every misanthrope on the internet, the positive memes did spread. (Good to know it’s not just trollish garbage that gets eyes on Twitter, isn’t it?) But even more interesting was how they spread.

The common belief is that information on the internet spreads like a virus. One person contacts it, they may or may not become “infected” (i.e. interested), and then they may or may not spread it on to the next person. However, the researchers for this study found that multiple exposures to a meme from multiple sources actually increased the probability that it would be retweeted or adopted by the user.

In simpler terms, you’re more likely to retweet something if multiple people you follow tweet it than if only one person you follow tweets it.

This study is great news for founders who are trying to drum up buzz around their startups. We don’t, of course, condone being sketchy. Don’t create your own version of those Ashley Madison bots — people really don’t like it when you do that. (And, if you get caught, the optics are terrible.)

But keep in mind the main lesson from this study, which is that people are more likely to share (positive) tweets and news that they see multiple timesthan they are to share tweets and news that only cross their screen once.

So if you’re trying to boost your Twitter following or use Twitter to gain more users, do a little brainstorming. Sit down with your team and come up with some ways you can increase the reach of your tweets. We here at Startups.co love Quuu, for example, for getting out our message. What else can you come up with?

GOT IT. WHATS NEXT?

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