Twitter Help Info: February 2009

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Twitter on the Tube

A few interesting Twitter videos that were released this week that you may have missed. Pretty interesting.

Good Morning America’s John Berman describes Twitter (thanks for providing embed codes ABC) and interviews MC Hammer about his Twitter usage (50 tweets/day).

Here is Nightline's John Donvan explaining the Twitter “phenomenon” with an interview of Ev and Biz. Since it’s geared to a mainstream audience that is probably unfamiliar with Twitter, it includes the great Common Craft video, Twitter in Plain English, which has garnered over 2.6M views.

And here’s Ev at TED telling the story of Twitter and how Twitter’s growth is being driven by unexpected uses.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Twitter and the Oscars: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

We all love the Oscars and we all love to Tweet about them. Like other events, Twitter enhances the experience for everyone. As you can see in the Twist chart, the Oscars have been the most popular conversations on Twitter over the past 24 hours. Hadn’t you felt that there was great data and insight hidden in all those tweets? It would be an extremely arduous task to unlock it though. That’s why I was so excited to learn about Thummit.

More than just an aggregator of Twitter discussions about the Oscars, Thummit is a social/mobile recommendation service in private beta used to evaluate sentiment of Tweets.

Unlike the plethora of polls and aggregators of #Oscars hashtags, Thummit delivers rankings based on everyone's first impressions. It's also an interesting example of putting engaging structure around the unstructured Twitter data.

Thummit tracked the Oscars chatter in real time by:

aggregating/filtering thousands of Twitter updates relevant to the Oscars
Analyzing sentiments to see which updates are positive (Thumbs Up) and negative (Thumbs down) and
Ranking the Tweets based on most popular and least popular.

Other Highlights included:

Hugh Jackman got a big Thumms Up, (over 80%), despite many people's concerns before the show on how he would do.
Among the bombs: Jessica Biel, (only 13% Thumms Up), Zac Efron (13%), and Miley Cyrus (16%). And Philip Seymour Hoffman's hat didn't earn him rave reviews.
The big Oscar winner, Slumdog Millionaire, did quite well (76%), but struggled to crack the Top 10 list. Perhaps they were too successful; as the night wore on and the awards piled up, the negative comments increased.

Thummit has also been used to rate the Super Bowl commercials and the Inauguration. It's cool to see Tweets analyzed as opposed to simply aggregated, which I think is the value here. Hopefully, we will see much more of Thummit as I think it is a great service, don’t you?

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Big video from Radian6 and news too.

If you’ve been long time reader (thanks, Mom), you may have noticed that I don’t blog much about my work. Kind of like the separation of church and state. Actually in the past, I worked for a company that didn’t really appreciate blogging. But now at Radian6, there is obviously a strong understanding of the benefits of blogging in social media. Many of the principals like CEO Marcel LeBrun and VP of Marketing and community David Alston blog. In fact, I highly recommend Marcel’s blog, Media Philosopher, and David’s TweetPR. Also, don’t forget Amber Naslund’s very popular Altitude Branding.

Now on to the lead. We’ve got a new release coming out shortly at Radian6. It’s pretty major and we think our customers will be quite pleased. The multi-talented David Alston even created a song and video, summoning the great Johnny Cache.

Sing along!

There's a new release a comin'
It's coming round the bend,
Developments seen no sunshine,
since, I don't know when,
New slice'n dice'n features,
all part of the plan,
Unleash those analytics,
oh you know you can.

Mama always told me,
listen's number one,
And comments are the building blocks of con-ver-sation.
Yes posts they are important,
but so are replies,
Now when you see something go viral, you'll know completely why.

I bet there's people speakin' bout their favorite brands out there,
They're probably asking questions & hoping that you'd share,
Source tagging is coming,
and organized you'll be,
So let those people keep a talkin'
You'll have the history.

Well if we freed you from the dashboard,
And if emails all you had,
Real-time notifications wouldn't be that bad,
You'd know all the conversations,
no matter time of day,
And you'd monitor social media,
cause you had a way.

Ok, so what’s the Twitter angle? We shared the link to the video and it seemed like everyone loved it!

Over 30 people retweeted it.

And many people gave it a digg! You can too. Or check out more photos of David singing. As you can see, we have a lot of fun at Radian6.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

News on Twitter

On January 23, 2008, a 20 year old man forced his way into a child day care center in Dendermonde, a small town in Belgium, Europe. He attacked the staff and the little children in the child day care center with a knife. One staff member and two babies were killed, several other staff members and babies were severly wounded. The agressor managed initially to escape, but he was arrested 90 minutes later.

Very quick the news of this horrible attack found its way to Twitter. As soon as the attack was mentioned on websites of Belgian newspapers, Twitter users picked up the story and expressed their agony in their Twitter messages. Later on the articles on Belgian news sites were also announced on Twitter, in Twitter messages that were automatically created. The news about this horrible attack became also known to news agencies, newspapers, radio and television stations and news aggregators worldwide, who also published it on their Twitter accounts.

Using Twitter Search, I traced the Twitter messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" - the French name for Dendermonde. From October 2008 until the moment of this writing, these words were mentioned in 1450 Twitter messages from 409 different Twitter users. The graph below shows the number of Twitter messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" per hour.

The peak on the graph is the hour after the stabbings were commited. Later smaller peaks occured when new facts about the agressor became public and when the funeral services for the victems were held.

As can be expected, a large part of these Twitter users can be located in Belgium. Belgium is followed by the Netherlands and France, neighbouring countries of Belgium. There were also Twitter users from countries far from Belgium announcing the horrible facts, e.g. Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Portugal and Serbia in Europe, also in the USA and Canada, in Brazil and South Africa, and also in Asia (Malaysia, Philippines).

74% of the Twitter messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" contained a hyperlink to a story on a newssite or a blogpost. The most productive Twitter users turned out to be Twitter users from news agencies, newspapers, radio and television stations and news aggregators. The 409 Twitter users posting messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" have in total over 100,000 followers. As Twitter Search is only capable of finding Twitter messages for public Twitter users, the total number of Twitter users who published messages containing the words "Dendermonde" or "Termonde" will probably exceed 409. The total number of Twitter users who were potentially informed of the horrible facts on January 23, 2009 at Dendermonde will probably exceed 100,000.

This analysis of this event shows that traditional media have discovered their way to Twitter. A large part of the messages published after the dramatic stabbings were indeed automatically published by these Twitter news accounts.

News travels also far and travels fast. Within a couple of hours Twitter users from locations far outside Belgium also twittered the horrible facts.

Currently the storm caused by the horrible facts has faded away. Life in and around Dendermonde has returned to its normal state. Unfortunatly several families will have to live with the tragical loss of life.

Short Twitter Names

There are no official figures of the number of Twitter users. Estimations go up to 8 million. As the number of Twitter users increases daily, new Twitter users find out that it is not easy to find a Twitter name that is still available. I had a close look at the shortest Twitter names, these consisting of only 1 and 2 characters.

All 1 character long Twitter names are currently taken. 6 of these 37 Twitter names (A-Z, 0-9 and underscore) are private Twitter accounts, 4 of these Twitter names are without updates.

There are 1369 Twitter names of 2 characters long - all combinations of A-Z, 0-9 and underscore. The good news is that 76 of these combinations are still free. 205 of the 2 character long Twitter accounts are private, 41 are suspended due to strange activity. 296 of the 2 character long Twitter accounts are still without updates.

The oldest 2 character long Twitter account is twitter.com/ev. It is the Twitter account of Evan Williams, one of the founders of Twitter.com. Other famous 2 character long Twitter accounts are ie - IE (yes Internet Explorer), twitter.com/om - Om Malik and twitter.com/f1 - Formula 1. Some of the 2 character long Twitter account are cleary fake accounts, e.g. twitter.com/sf - San Francisco, but without friends and updates, twitter.com/fr - Francophonie, "voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?" and twitter.com/uk - no meaningful name or bio, but 195 followers.

A lot of the 1 or 2 character long Twitter names are taken but not really used. In total there are 1406 combinations. 1289 combinations or 92% taken. Only 473 of these Twitter accounts have a location, 384 of these locations are "real" locations.

The 1289 Twitter accounts have on average 49 friends (other Twitter accounts that are followed), with twitter.com/s the Twitter account with the most friends - 11722. 572 Twitter accounts have no friends at all.

The 1289 Twitter accounts with a (very) short name are on average being followed by 186 other Twitter users, with twitter.com/ev having the most followers - 98712. 346 Twitter accounts do not have followers.

The 1289 Twitter accounts with a (very) short name have on average 405 updates. The most productive Twitter account is twitter.com/zb, with as of this writing 45469 updates. 300 Twitter accounts are still waiting for their first update.

Of the 1289 Twitter accounts with a (very) short name 136 accounts stand out as blank accounts, accounts without friends, followers or updates.

If you are looking for a (very) short Twitter Name, you are either too late of you will have to hurry to get your Twitter account registered. Or you could consider to persuade the holder of one of the inactive accounts to hand over his Twitter account.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Twestival inspires Twitter for a good cause

It seemed like half of Twitter was partying at the Twestival last night. A great cause that inspired people in almost 200 cities around the world to help charity: water. At home in Seattle, there were about 100 people who helped raise about $1100 for the cause. As part of the event, several people and sponsors donated some great prizes. One guy donated a date (dinner and a movie) with himself! Desperate or ballsy, what do you think? I even won a prize in the raffle, no, not the date, but a Home Depot gift card. I met a bunch of new Tweeters and even got to catch up with a few friends that I’ve only talked to online like Veronica Wei Sopher and Charl Pearce. Danielle Morrill streamed the event which was pretty cool. It was also great to see and hang out with friends Amanda Wolfman, Claus Loos, Eric Weaver and Eric Berto.

As mentioned, there were close to 200 Twestival events, so many Twitter friends checked in and shared stories about their events.

Boston

From the home in my heart, over 200 people celebrated Twestival at OM in Harvard Square. It was an awesome time and a fantastic turnout for a great cause. Rachel Levy took some amazing photos of the event. Below are Rachel, Pamela Rosenthal and Todd van Hoosear.

Montreal – From Adele McAlear

Montreal was one of the first 25 cities to sign on to host a Twestival and we're excited to see more than 175 cities participating in what has become a truly global event. The Twestival Montreal event is in both French and English, reflecting the bilingual nature of our city. This means that Tweeting, blogging and event blog badges are in both languages. Twestival Montreal, at the chic and modern Suco Lounge had over 200 people with two local DJs and a local radio personality MCing the event. Renowned concert photographer, Eva Blue, staffed the photobooth where, for a donation, party-goers had their picture taken with water-themed props as a souvenir of the evening. Twestival Montreal raised over $5000 for the event. But most of all, we're proud that through all of our efforts - sponsors, volunteers, supporters and party-goers - we are helping to save lives with clean water. And that is something to cheer about! The Grand prize winner for the trip to Vancovuer was Jean Aymeri (below right), who sadly became another victim of the economy and lost his job this morning.

Dallas – Lauren Vargas Reporting

Three weeks ago, I did a crazy thing, I signed up Dallas/Fort Worth to be a participating city in the global Twestival. Three weeks ago, I put out a call over Twitter asking for volunteers to help put on such a venture. Thirteen other crazy people I had never met before volunteered to make Dallas Twestival happen. In three weeks, over Twitter, email and numerous conference calls, we organized our first Twestival…not to be our last. Although, we will start planning at least 51 weeks in advance of Dallas Twestival 2010! Dallas’ event was at Mockingbird Station, where tweeters and non-tweeters, alike met to enjoy live music by local artists, take in a free film at Angelika Theater and eat good food and drink. The Dallas Twestival was 100% volunteer and donation driven. There was no overhead for the event. All proceeds benefited Charity:Water. Dallas’ goal was to raise $4,000, roughly the cost of drilling one water well in Central Africa. We met and exceeded goal to raise $4,302 and counting! Thank you to the brilliant people I worked with to make this event a reality, our generous sponsors in tough economic times and to the Dallas Twestival goers who came to the event.

Denver – Erika Napoletano Reporting

The Denver Twestival gathered over 200 Tweeps and non-Tweeps from the Denver and Boulder area at the Fox and Hound in Littleton, Colorado. Between online donations, a book sale and a kickass silent auction, current funds raised over $4000 We with to thank Chuck Blakeman, Ringmaster of Ceremonies for the evening and the generous donation of venue by the Fox and Hound for making the Denver event happen. Chuck and Erika are below.

An amazing event for an amazing charity! As Laura Fitton pointed out on Twitter, there were over 6,600 Twestival photos posted on Flickr. As you can see from the Twist report below, Twestival was rocking on Twitter this week. Here’s to Twestival!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Taking a hike for the Twestival

Today is the big Twestival day where over 175 cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water. I will be attending the Seattle Twestival at Spitfire Grill, in Belltown. I hope to see the Seattle Twitterati there. Please let me know how the Twestival goes in your city.

In case this is all so new that you are scratching your head and asking what’s a Twestival, here is the back story.

charity: water for Twestival from charity: water on Vimeo.

In addition to the Twestival, Lidija Davis wrote about another unique approach to fundraising for the charity on ReadWriteWeb. Paul Smith, a reporter for the Guardian in the UK is planning to travel as far as he can, based on the generosity of fellow tweeters. Living in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, the furthest that he can go is just about to New Zealand.

There are five rules he needs to follow:

He can only accept offers of travel and accommodation on Twitter from users who are following @twitchhiker - if none is offered, he'll be sleeping 'rough'
He can't plan more than three days in advance
He can only spend money on food and drink
If he gets more than one offer, he can choose; if he only gets one he has to take it with 48 hours
If he can't move on from a location in 48 hours, the challenge is over and he goes home.

Pretty interesting, don’t you think?

Meet the Twitchhiker.

The Twitchhiker will raise money for charity:water by getting sponsorships and donations.

The Twitchhiker’s journey starts March 1st. Let’s wish him well. How far do you think he will get? Do you think the generosity of the Twitter community can get him to New Zealand? And how much money do you think the Twitchhiker will raise?

Become a Twitter Ninja

Today I was fortunate to present a webinar with the great folks from The Society for Word of Mouth, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, Become a Twitter Ninja. We had a great crowd on the webinar, all excited to learn more about taking the next step on Twitter and engaging with their audience. That was exciting to see.

Feel free to download the presentation.

Become A Twitter Ninja

View more presentations from Warren Sukernek. (tags: webinar swom)

AS you would expect from a Twitter webinar, there was some great dialogue/ feedback on Twitter. Here are some sample comments:

Saturday, February 7, 2009

More people tweet with mobile than desktop

Mashable published a study showing the 10 most popular Twitter clients and the percentage of users posting from each service based on data from Twitstat. These 10 applications below represent over 70% of all usage.

Rank	Client	% Users	Category
1	Web	29.57%	Web
2	Tweetdeck	10.58%	Desktop
3	Twitterfeed	5.54%	Utility
4	Twhirl	4.92%	Desktop
5	Twitterrific	3.79%	Mobile
6	Tweetie	3.65%	Mobile
7	Text	3.40%	Mobile
8	Mobile web	3.00%	Mobile
9	TwitterFon	2.96%	Mobile
10	TwitPic	2.94%	Utility

Some interesting conclusions when you group the data by category:

Rank	Category	% Users
1	Web	29.57%
2	Mobile	16.80%
3	Desktop	15.50%
4	Utility	8.48%

So more people use Twitter from their phone than from the desktop. Interesting! Are you surprised by that? How do you usually tweet? Please answer in the comments.