BEIJING: Twitter, with its 241 million users who tweet out 500 million messages daily, is shaping the public opinion like never before, scientists say.

Dominant, majority viewpoints emerge quickly on Twitter and once stabilized, these opinions become difficult to change, a new study has found.

Researchers also found that Twitter users are more likely to work to change the opinions of others than to admit to changes of their own.

Scientists in China investigated how opinions evolve on Twitter by gathering about 6 million 140-character-or-less messages that were tweeted out over a six month period in the first half of 2011.

They ran these messages through computer algorithms that sorted them by topic (" iPhone 4" or “blackberry," for instance), and they analyzed the underlying sentiments of the authors as they evolved over time.

The work showed several surprises about how Twitter shapes public opinion, said Fei Xiong, a lecturer at Beijing Jiaotong University who gathered and analyzed the data with Professor Yun Liu.

The new revelations may shape how political candidates run their social media campaigns or influence the way companies market their goods and services, researchers said.

Read More: Sweet! Bio-Batteries That Run On Sugar to Power Smartphones for 10 Days and 99acres.com Launches Android And iOS Apps