Small accounts reciprocate engagement; big accounts mostly don't

The stat. When replies are bucketed by the target's follower tier — small (0–1K), peer (1K–10K), big (10K+) — the small tier reciprocates dramatically more. Replies to small accounts were far more likely to earn a like back, a reply back, or a follow than replies to big accounts, where the reply usually vanished into a crowded thread with no response.

How it was measured. Every reply was tagged with the target's follower tier at send time, then scored for the engagement it received back (likes + 3×replies + 5×bookmarks on the reply, plus whether a follow was attributed to that target). Averaging by tier, the small bucket's reciprocation rate sat well above peer, which sat above big.

The honest caveat. One account, observational, n≈983 replies split across three tiers — so each tier's sub-sample is in the low hundreds, and the big-account bucket is noisiest because a single viral thread can swing it. There's also survivorship: big accounts get thousands of replies, so non-reciprocation is the base rate for everyone, not something unique to this account. The direction is robust; the exact gap is fuzzy.

The tactic it implies. If your goal is relationships and reciprocal growth, weight your replies toward small and peer accounts — they'll actually reply back, follow back, and remember you. Reserve big accounts for visibility plays only: reply there to be seen by the audience, not to be acknowledged by the author. Mixing up those two intents — expecting a 200K account to befriend you — is how people burn their reply budget and conclude "engagement doesn't work."