Posts Tagged ‘twitter’
Twitter can predict movie success
July 6th, 2010
This story caught my eye the other day over at physorg.com site entitled “Researchers say Twitter algorithm can predict movie profits”
The post goes on to confirm that two social computing scientists at HP Labs in Palo Alto, Calif., contend that computational models using Twitter feeds can predict, with as much as 97.3 percent accuracy, how a movie will perform on its first weekend of release.
How does it work?
The HP Labs study analysed nearly 3 million Twitter updates that mentioned 24 major releases — “Alice in Wonderland,” “Avatar” and “Twilight: New Moon” — over the course of three months. By factoring in the date of a movie’s release and the number of theatres where it appeared, the researchers predicted opening weekend box-office performance with 97.3 percent accuracy. They also developed a system to evaluate the sentiment of Twitter updates — positive, neutral or negative — to predict the following weekend’s returns with 94 percent accuracy.
Any results?
The researchers’ Twitter-based methodology predicted “Dear John” would garner $30.71 million at the box office on opening weekend. It pulled in $30.46 million. And for “The Crazies,” the methodology predicted $16.8 million, and it earned $16.07 million on opening weekend.
If this is true and this “algorithm” can really predict opening weekend profits, it could potentially also be used for any means of launch including books, magazines, TV series and countless other products.
I’m sure marketeers and advertising executives would fall over themselves for a product like this, helping them fine tune advertising campaigns, and marketing ideas to ring every pound out of the campaign budget and maximise potential profits and success.
Read more about the story here.
Favorite tweets made into short films
June 21st, 2010
Here’s an interesting thought “What if your Twitter conversations were made into short films?”
Jen Oslislo and her pals have done just that.
Highly visual and very amusing, good stuff!
Twitter: The Criterion Collection, Vol II from Jen Oslislo on Vimeo.
Here is the first in the series.
Twitter: The Criterion Collection from sween on Vimeo.
What Twitter conversation would you like to be turned into a short video? Please add your thoughts to the comments.
June 16th, 2010
Tweasier the new Twitter management application, and brainchild of Chris Norton, launched last week. I’ve been having a play around and wanted to share my experiences with you.
First of all, what is Tweasier? Well, over to Chris to explain:
“The idea for Tweasier came from an idea after I started blogging specifically just about useful Twitter tools . The Tweasier blog started to grow in stature and popularity and I started to think that maybe a tool should be developed which has some really great features. I suppose you could say it’s because of you guys.
“The application is only in beta testing (so please be gentle) but we are hoping you guys (its users) will help us find the nasty bugs so we can eradicate as many as possible before we launch this tool to the world.”
So, what’s the difference between Tweasier and the other Twitter management applications? Surely Chris has missed the boat and been beaten to the punch by other Twitter clients? Well, no, Tweasier is much more than a client. Tweasier’s brilliance is in the features it offers, and specifically the analytics suite.
Yes, i know there are other free Twitter analytics packages, but Tweasier is well…easier. It’s an all in one package, and the Tweasier team has obviously put a lot of thought into exactly what the user wants from their Twitter application, including simple but effective search and suggestions features.
To offer you a quick rundown of the features, i’ll revert back to the Tweasier launch post:
The new Tweasier application is packed with helpful services, allowing Twitter users to do any of the following:
• Run, save and clone Twitter searches based on location, keywords and personal biographies so conversations can be monitored.
• Receive personalised email notifications informing the user about their activity within the Twittersphere
• Visit Tweasier’s fully equipped analytics suite - providing more than 30 different up-to-date statistics on any Twitter account. Some of the graphs and data can also be exported for use in future presentations or reports.
• Sort an account’s friends or followers by more than 20 different criteria such as: people that haven’t tweeted in the last 30 days, people that didn’t follow the user back and also prune your friends to clear an account up if necessary.
• Users can take a quick peek at Twitter conversations between two people to get both sides of the story.
• Users can read messages, tweet, direct message and even shorten long URLs using Tweasier’s dedicated Twitter client.
• Scheduled tweeting - users can write and save several tweets until later in the day
• Users can use Tweasier’s own in-house ranking system which easily shows whether a user is worth following or not
Take my advice, when you go to Tweasier, check out the Analytics package, and have a play. I think it’s a real triumph of useful data displayed in a simple and readable format. The dashboard offers 30 different types of stats, including network features that show who of your followers is most influential. Some stats can also be exported, which makes my life so much easier!
Tweasier is currently in Beta and i’m sure it will improve, but it’s already excellent, and although i’m sure the last few weeks before launch have been tough for Chris and his team, he can rest assured that it’s been worth it. I’ve already shown the package to a few clients and they all love it.
Well done guys!
Editor tells staff not to use silly words like “tweet”
June 14th, 2010
Here’s a story that caught my attention over the weekend, The New York Times’ editor, Phil Corbet, sent a memo around to staff telling them not to use ‘tweet’ or similar words, which he referred to as “silly”.
Here is the memo:
How About “Chirp”?
Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, “tweet” has not yet achieved the status of standard English. And standard English is what we should use in news articles.
Except for special effect, we try to avoid colloquialisms, neologisms and jargon. And “tweet” — as a noun or a verb, referring to messages on Twitter — is all three. Yet it has appeared 18 times in articles in the past month, in a range of sections.
Of course, new technology terms sprout and spread faster than ever. And we don’t want to seem paleolithic. But we favour established usage and ordinary words over the latest jargon or buzzwords.
One test is to ask yourself whether people outside of a target group regularly employ the terms in question. Many people use Twitter, but many don’t; my guess is that few in the latter group routinely refer to “tweets” or “tweeting.” Someday, “tweet” may be as common as “e-mail.” Or another service may elbow Twitter aside next year, and “tweet” may fade into oblivion. (Of course, it doesn’t help that the word itself seems so inherently silly.)
“Tweet” may be acceptable occasionally for special effect. But let’s look for deft, English alternatives: use Twitter, post to or on Twitter, write on Twitter, a Twitter message, a Twitter update. Or, once you’ve established that Twitter is the medium, simply use “say” or “write.”
Techcrunch has a couple of updates on the story:
Update: Dave Itzkoff, who blogs for the New York Times, tweets that the report is indeed not true. Which makes it a perfect satirical piece worth sharing anyway. Update 2: Another New York Times staffer tells us privately that the memo is “100% real” and Itzkoff clarifies that it is not the memo’s existence he was denying, but that some journalists inside the NYT recognise “tweet” as a word and there is an internal debate ongoing about it.
Is it true or not? Whatever the case it is mildly amusing, and highly embarrassing for the NY Times, but hang on a sec maybe the guy has a point, will the vast majority of his readership know what “tweet” and similar words actually mean?
June 10th, 2010
In the Football/soccer world, Guillem Balague is a key fixture at Sky Sports, and a well respected journalist who, like many others, is using Twitter to voice his opinions, thoughts and share news.
Today he had a mini rant:
“Courtesy of Twitter, I`ve been getting more abuse from the Twitter tw*ts and toddlers because I`ve been reporting on Barcelona’s strategy for recruiting Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal.
Apparently, because I`m Spanish, I`m doing my bit for the Catalan club of which I must surely be a fan: because I`m from Barcelona. You couldn`t be more wrong. Is every Londoner and Arsenal fan?”
I shall Tweet no more, other than to link to an article in full. The internet has become a mine of mis-information and unless you read it here, or in an article with my name on the by-line, then the next time you read in a forum or a blog that ‘Balague says….’ – you can take it with a pinch of salt.
But when I report that candidates for the Barcelona presidency have a strategy for signing Cesc Fabregas, apparently I`m single handedly masterminding the downfall of Arsene Wenger.
The most interesting part for me was the “The internet has become a mine of mis-information” an issue that will pop up again and again I’m sure, and causes a lot of problems for individuals and brand’s alike - which is part of the reason why and understanding of the theories on online networks and online reputation management is so important!
Read the story in his own words
Did Facebook and Twitter influence the General Election?
May 7th, 2010
As I took up my blunt pencil attached to a piece of string in the polling booth yesterday, and made a cross against my chosen candidate, it struck me how much Twitter and Facebook have enhanced my interest and understanding around this General Election, but similarly how far the UK still has to go before we can experience a truly, socially-connected election.
This was the first General Election where Twitter and Facebook played a part. They gave the electorate a new ‘voice’ aside from their vote, enabling them to freely discuss election issues in an uncensored environment within a much wider network of individuals.
Facebook set-up a live voter counter on its website (via a tie-up with the Electoral Commission) - according to the final tally, 107,892 Facebook users voted. A poll was also conducted through this group, aka the Facebook election, which saw Nick Clegg and the LibDems emerge victorious. Facebook groups and political pages have been hugely active - today a particularly active one seems to be ‘I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who want Proportional Representation - UK‘.
But how much of this social network activity and buzz was two-way conversation and engagement?
A comment on the BBC blog is telling:
“I asked questions via Twitter of the main parties, but no reply was ever returned. In fact, the only politician who replied was John Prescott. The political parties were treating Twitter just like another letterbox through which to poke leaflets - but failing to grasps the idea that such systems require two-way communication to be effective. I just felt ignored by them online.”
Today across Twitter in particular, and to a lesser degree Facebook, there seems to be a general feeling that today’s election results do not match with their political learnings and discussions over the past few weeks. BBC blogger, Rory Cellan-Jones, makes the same conclusion in his blog post: So was it an Internet Election?. He opens the post saying: “The verdict was already in, even before polling day. This was not an internet election, and all those who had suggested it might be had got it completely wrong. It was a television election, and all of those tweeters and bloggers were sad political obsessives talking to each other.”
Facebook and Twitter have undoubtedly provided a gateway to political engagement, and importantly among the younger generation. A YouGov survey found that a quarter of 18-24-year-olds had commented on politics via social networks. But at the end of the day, this activity seems to have had little impact on the final election outcome.
Promoted Tweets - Twitter’s sensible first step to monetisation
April 14th, 2010
So, it’s finally happened. Twitter has made its first foray into the world of advertising with ‘Promoted Tweets’. Now before you throw your toys out of the pram, this isn’t the end of Twitter as we know it…or the world, it’s Twitter’s first, and somewhat tentative, attempt to make some much needed cash, and so far, so good.
As Twitter’s Co-founder Biz Stone said: ‘They will not be traditional adverts‘ and they must ‘resonate with users‘ and be part of conversations.
The reality is, advertisers will be able to buy Promoted Tweets that will then appear on Twitter’s search results pages, as shown in the image above. Let me say that again ‘appear on Twitter’s search results pages‘ so all the fear surrounding our Twitter feeds being clogged up with irrelevant advertising have proved unfounded…for now at least.
For the official word, check out Biz Stones post from yesterday: Some of the most interesting points for me are the opening:
‘Over the years, we’ve resisted introducing a traditional Web advertising model because we wanted to optimize for value before profit. The open exchange of information creates opportunities for individuals, organizations, and businesses alike. We recognized value in this exchange and planned to amplify it in a meaningful and relevant manner.’
And part of the Q&A:
Q. What will users see?
You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We’ll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate.
‘Promoted Tweets will be clearly labelled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favouriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.’
Q. You said, “first phase”; what else do you have planned?
A. ‘Before we roll out more phases, we want to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience and advertiser value. Once this is done, we plan to allow Promoted Tweets to be shown by Twitter clients and other ecosystem partners and to expand beyond Twitter search, including displaying relevant Promoted Tweets in your timelines in a way that is useful to you.’
So, although this is a first phase, it seems a very sensible way to approach the monetisation issue. Twitter appreciates that history has shown advertising and social networks don’t mix well, and is taking a gentle approach to beginning this process.
Therefore, I was a little confused to read a Telegraph piece this afternoon, which detailed the reaction in a survey by Groupola, who polled 1,219 UK Twitter users and found that 68 per cent of those interviewed were upset about the idea of branded tweets entering their personal feeds.
I’m not questioning the sample or the survey, but I’m not sure what the 68% were so upset about? I mean as it stands this doesn’t seem to be too intrusive and has little or no affect on the service. Yes ads entering feeds would cause more of an issue, but is this a case of the hype over blowing the reality? Or as only eight per cent said that they would reserve judgement to see how the new service would play out over the coming weeks, I wonder if the others had seen promoted tweets before casting their vote?
As I see it Promoted Tweets will currently only appear at the top of some of the Twitter search results pages, which resonates with Google’s paid advertising model and is surely something we’re familiar with by now.
Yes, the second phase of advertising will surely see more direct advertising, but let’s keep some perspective;
Twitter can’t go on providing a free service without any sponsorship/advertising. The monetisation has to come. They’re certainly not rushing it (four years after launch) it’s not a bolt from the blue, and it isn’t a draconian measure that will make us all pack our bags and leave the platform.
I for one will be looking out eagerly for the next phase of advertising, and hope Twitter manages to continue this level of transparency around its plans.
BTW: The current advertising partners include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America, and you can read more about Virgin America’s use of Promoted Tweets in this Mashable article.
Chris Norton has also done a great round up of opinions, and you can get more information on Promoted Tweets from this Ad Age article: Twitter Has a Business Model: ‘Promoted Tweets’.
April 14th, 2010
The guys and girls at Liberate Media, including myself, all use Twitter regularly and we actively encourage our clients, peers and anyone else that will listen to do so, spelling out the reasons why it’s an important part of any communication tool set.
As with any social network, trends and habits influence Twitter’s use, and here are a few recent Twitter observations that i’ve noticed:
- More via’s and less RT’s
- Early adopters do not seem to share as much as they used to
- Twitter has become a working day tool (between the hours of 9-5, or perhaps 8-6)
- Brands to do not monitor at weekends, and at nights, depending on the time zone
- There are still lots of brands pushing messages out but not engaging
- Users are like sheep they go from one big product launch to the next
- More about self promotion, less about being helpful
- More location based Tweets starting to filter through
- Lots of back slapping
If I’m honest, I’m guilty of a few of the above!
This snapshot is obviously taken from the people I follow which is around the 800 mark. I’d love to know what observations you are currently making, please add yours in the comments section below.
How Bournemouth University is tackling digital PR at degree level
March 26th, 2010
Yesterday Andy and I met up with Tom Watson, who is deputy dean (Education) of Bournemouth University’s Media School, and highly regarded within the PR academic world.
We were keen to gain insight into how the next generation of PRs, marketers and journalists are being educated and prepared for the field, with particular interest in how social media is being addressed within these disciplines.
The Media School is divided into four academic groups: Marketing & PR, Journalism & Communications (which includes a course in Multimedia Journalism), Media Production, and Computer Animation.
What was interesting to hear is that numbers for the Interactive Media Production BA (Hons) course have been dwindling, with no clear explanation why. Baffling in light of the thriving industry sector that this course represents. According to Tom, the reality is that interactivity/digital is being built into all degree programmes, and students are taking the view that interactivity is being dealt with at all levels across all media degrees. The boundaries between the various degree programmes are increasingly becoming less confined.
The Public Relations BA (Hons) is a four year programme, including a 40 week placement in the third year. Digital communications strategies are taught in the second year, and again in the fourth. However, Tom admitted that social media is moving faster then they can research it which is making it a challenge to incorporate within course programmes - this is a reality of our times for the PR academic world.
There were no surprises that Twitter came up a lot in conversation. It was refreshing to get outside of our echo chamber which in all reality is obsessed with Twitter, and hear how the younger generation of students are rapidly losing interest in Twitter, and the academic PR world do not see it as the be all and end all.
Tom is currently organising The International History of Public Relations Conference, and his DummySpit blog can be read here.
Following me, following you (ah-haa)
March 19th, 2010
This post has been brewing for some time, and recent conversations have brought it to the front of my mind. It’s certainly not a new debate, but it is still relevant, and never quite seems to go away as a topic of discussion.
Allow me to set the scene. I am a Twitter user (shock!), I’ve been using Twitter since December 24th 2007, according to How long have you been tweeting and although it took me sometime to truly warm up to Twitter, I now find it a very useful conversation tool both personally and as a part of my role at Liberate Media. But friends, I do not follow back all of those that follow me.
This is not a steadfast rule, I don’t refuse to follow people that follow me, I always take a good look at new followers (maybe not straight away) and evaluate if following in return would add to my community and the focuses that I am interested in.
This approach has of course lost me followers, and earlier this month one such follower made their reasons for this following - unfollowing procedure clear. Without going into too much detail this person had found me via a colleague, thought I would be interesting to follow (in fact they followed all of Liberate Media’s team) but unfollowed me within a few weeks for the sole reason that I did not follow them back. I know this because they said as much in an email, confirming that an agency of our type should be aware of its followers and follow them back as a matter of course, and as we didn’t they have unfollowed and wouldn’t be coming back.
The point that we may have looked at this person and decided not to follow them back didn’t seem to cross their mind, and by communicating this sequence of events as a failing of the agency seemed to suggest that reciprocal following is some sort of unwritten rule or etiquette.
Before I get into my opinions on the issue, let me state that everyone is entitled to their opinion, there are no official rules of Twitter, other than the obvious, and we all have a right to use the platform as we see fit, so this person is of course free to act as they wish.
In my case however, I choose not to follow reciprocally. I choose not to mass follow thousands to get nearly the same number back, I see no value in it as in my opinion it doesn’t help to build a conversation - it’s just a numbers game. Of course we’re all interested in our follower numbers, that’s just human nature, but some equate value in the number of followers, some equate value in the difference between followers and following, some equate value in the quality of conversation and the exchange of knowledge. I fall into the last category, that’s my decision, it works for me.
Some people may feel that my favoured approach is in fact anti-community, and I am not interacting with the whole. I would argue that the size of the community is not the issue, but the relevancy that each person has within that community and the value that each person brings/derives within the community, whether it’s 10 strong or 10,000, is the issue.
I know there will be some that agree and others that disagree, and that’s a good thing in my opinion. Our social media community, which encompasses many platforms and networks, allows us the freedom of choice to do as we wish and develop our communities in the way the suits us best. That’s why I don’t think there should be community rules that say things like we have to follow people back that follow us.
It’s not rude, it’s not anti-community, and it doesn’t go against some social media sermon that was supposedly written in days of yore.
If I’m not following you back it’s not because I have slighted you or your family, it’s not because I don’t believe you are interesting, it’s simply a choice that we all make based on a number of elements. After all, do we welcome every person we meet into our network of friends? Do I have to become friends with those that my friends introduce me to? Isn’t that an individual choice that we each make, and have the right to later change?
So, what are your thoughts on the subject, how do you build your community? Here are a couple of pieces that look a little deeper into the pros and cons of reciprocal following:
Why you should follow everyone who follows you on Twitter by Don Reisinger
The evils of reciprocal following by Doug Braun
If you really want to know who is not following you back, check out Friendorfollow