Hashtag usage — a survey
POSTED IN microblogging, my projects, twitter | TAGS : hashtag, meme, twitter 22 June 2010
I’m very interested in the motivation behind uses of hashtags on Twitter — I have a feeling that they are more created than searched.
I would be very interested to see Twitter Search stats — to see how many people actually look at collections hashtagged content rather than just pump them out because it seems part of etiquette. This hypothesis brewed when I saw how hashtag use breaks down of during real big events (World Cup, election) — as people already know the context, I am thinking that they are used more as a shorthand for context than searched or monitored.
Without much hope of getting that valuable data, I have created a very short questionnaire to get some feeling for use of hashtags. Due to the responses being self-selecting I am assuming that the results will be biased towards experienced Twitter users, but we’ll see. That this may be compounded due to my network containing a lot of social media profesionals is also a worry, so I would appreciate if you would spread it as far as you can.
Hashtags, A new challenge to idiots
POSTED IN microblogging, social media, twitter | TAGS : hashtags, Olympics, twitter, Wall Street Journal 25 February 2010
Apparently the Olympics suffer from ‘Ambush Marketing’, meaning that if they don’t stop other people doing adverts that are a bit like they have something to do with the event then the official sponsorships aren’t worth as much dosh. It’s all about scarcity, just like how TV rights are only worth so much if you can stop other people showing the games (something that the sports world is also struggling with), or how news coverage (or at least the adverts that sit alongside it) only makes money of there are a limited number of people doing it.
The Olympic movement (and sport in general) is not know for it’s forward thinking policy on this sort of thing, we’ve seen people with cameras not being allowed in, Dutch football fans’ trousers being confiscated, and fixture list copyrights being policed with the ferocity of, well, only the music industry are equally as dickheaded. Not only that, but they’ve been accused of bizarre censorship around the current games:
So when the Wall Street Journal decided to stir up a bit of Twitter trouble, it was easy to find brands supposedly breaking the Olympic marketing rules (in which “nonsponsors are barred from referring to the Games and their athletes in name, likeness or imagery that evokes the Games in any media without a waiver from the committee” — this would now one would assume cover the “official hashtag”):
Verizon and Red Bull were the two accused here, by joining in with the conversations around events rather than sticking to broadcasting marketing tweets (“barketing”? if it’s not been called that before, I’m coining it) they’d broken rules drawn up in another information age.
You can’t control the use of words when you can no longer control the scarcity of information. Something even the World’s oldest organisations are going to have to learn.
Twitpanto – worth your vote
POSTED IN my projects, social media, twitter | TAGS : award, shorty award, twitpanto, twitter, vote 6 January 2010
I’m not usually one to hold much stock in awards, but I like the mixture of democracy and professional opinion that The Shorty Awards has (public vote sorts out a shortlist for such luminaries as David Pogue and MC Hammer to preside over). They are pitched as the Twitter Oscars — so as what I guess is the best dramatic use of Twitter, I think Twitpanto deserves a vote. It’s (currently) doing quite well in the ‘art’ category.
Vote here, or just click on this bit and tweet for Twitpanto (please?).
You are not your brand online — and especially not on Twitter
POSTED IN good practice, twitter | TAGS : branding, twitter 22 July 2009
Yes, good interaction on the social web is all about personality. But. Brands aren’t people, they don’t have friends, desires, dislikes. They don’t have time off. People do.
So if you’ve decided that a Twitter account for your brand is the way to go, think very hard about the separation between YOU and THE BRAND — even if it’s only one or two of you that do the tweeting.
It may seem like an easy decision, you want to be on Twitter (it’s the next big thing, everyone says so) you want to promote your business or hobby — so you sign up for the service as @SuperPlumbing or whatever. But, think, who do you expect or want to follow you:
- There are people that know you — they may be interested in your business too.
- There are people that don’t know you — they may be interested in your business.
If you treat @SuperPlumbing just as a username for your personal account, but tweet about your business:
- People that know you will get fed up of constant business tweets (if they aren’t heavy users or fans of your service).
- People that care about your business are put off by the personal stuff.
Is your business “relaxing with a beer after a hard day”, is it “at a #goodmeeting with @anotherperson”? No it isn’t — you are. Does your business have conversations with friends? Not really.
Get a separate account for yourself, and one for the brand.
Creating a Twitter account for a business or a brand (or even a little project you’re running as a hobby) opens up a new communication channel. You need to think about what it needs to say, how it decides who to talk to, what it talks about and how often. You need to think about how you monitor responses — following everyone just isn’t a great option. You need to think about who responds if you’re unavailable — if you’re a proper business you in effect need a CRM system (software or just practise) that makes sure responses are done.
Brand accounts don’t need to be serious, or even focused, but they need to be inclusive.
If you tweet too personally, to or about a group of people that you follow (but of course not everyone will be) then that creates exclusivity — that in itself will put people off, never mind the irrelevance of your activities to the “fan”.
Using Twitter as yourself away from the brand is a good way to see how people use it (so do it first), plus you can do what the heck you like.
I personally have likes and dislikes about how people tweet (although I wouldn’t assume to tell you what to do at all), some people I love in real life tweet in ways that mean I just can’t stand to follow them (too much, too much retweeting , auto blog posting) — but you need to find your own feet and react to people in whatever way you wish.
One thing that is annoying is the creation of a brand account and then retweeting all of the tweets to your personal account too (if people care they will follow…) — separation again, tell me about you, not your business.
Or tell me about your brand, but not you. Tell me both, but separately.
Goverment Dept. Twitter Strategy
POSTED IN social media, twitter | TAGS : social media, strategy, twitter 21 July 2009
Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), has turned BIS’s Twitter strategy into a generic template Twitter strategy for government Departments.
It’s a fascinating document, and very useful and extendable to other organisations (with tweaking). Basically this sort of thing (or thought about strategy at the very least) is important because you can’t have conversations with an organisation, only the people within it – so it’s worthwhile detailing how they are to act when “speaking” on behalf of the organisation.
Use of Twitter opens up another method of communication, and while the ideal is to hire people who understand how to use social media (or train those that already work there) it’s very useful to have guidelines and overall strategy. What happens when the person tweeting as your organisation is on holiday? Who makes sure that responses happen (what’s the CRM system for incoming tweets)?
It doesn’t need to be this detailed, but it is important to think about it – and the metrics for usefulness are well worth thinking about too.
Are MPs happy?
POSTED IN Conferences & Talks, my projects, social media, twitter | TAGS : data, mbcamp, MPs, psychology, social media, Tom Watson, twitter 30 June 2009
And don’t worry this isn’t going to be a rant about expenses.
At Moseley Barcamp I gave a presentation about ‘conversational psychogeography‘ and the potential for an explosion in data analysis of emotions and place. It was a very broad overview and I continually admitted that real research needed to be done (I’d love to do it, but might have to find someone to fund it). As part of the talk I mentioned by emotional analysis of Birmingham social media – which outputs at @birminghamuk on Twitter.
During the questions afterwards Tom Watson suggested that my Birmingham UK emotion scraping could be applied to groups of people – Twittering MPs in particular. Technically it certainly can, and so I did. It’s at jonbounds.co.uk/arempshappy and tweets a score each day via @arempshappy on Twitter. It uses exactly the same code as the Birmingham UK system, except that it takes its data from an aggregated feed of the tweets of all MPs produced by Tweetminster.
Using groups of people immediately makes the analysis of the data easier (or at least offers precedent) – there’s already a website offering (limited, automated) analysis of people’s tweets. It’s called tweetpsych and uses established linguistic techniques (eg LIWC) to produce scores for different aspects of personality based on person’s tweets. to extend this to groups of people should be easy.
Although restricting analysis to groups of people opens up possibilities, the groups need to be be large enough to make the sample useful and also static enough to keep the statistics baring comparison. In some respects the group of tweeting MPs is ideal – and interesting enough to be worth analysing.
How useful it is is another matter, it was easy enough to set up – and could be improved upon by someone interested in groups – so let’s watch it and see if it spikes anywhere interestingly.
it’s not psychogeography, but it’s interesting.
Tom Watson suggested that my Birmigham UK emotion scraping coud be applied to groups of people – Twittering MPs in particular. Techically it certainly can, and so i did. It’s at jonbounds.co.uk/arempshappy and tweets a score each day via @arempshappy on Twitter. It uses exactly the same code as the Birmigham UK system, except that it takes its data from an aggregated feed of the tweets of all MPs produced by Tweetminster.
Using groups of people imediately makes the analysis of the data easier (or at least offers precident) – there’s already a website offering (limited, automated) analysis of people’s tweets. It’s called tweetpsyche (check) and uses established linguistic techniques (link to software) to produce scores for different aspects of personality based on person’s tweets. to extend this to groups of people should be easy.
Although resticting anaylisis to groups of people opens up possibilites, the groups need to be be large enough to make the sample useful and also static enough to keep the statistics baring comparison. In some respects the group of tweeting MPs is ideal – and interesting enough to be worth anallising.
How useful it is is another matter, it was easy enough to set up – and could be improved upon by someone interested in groups – so let’s watch it and see if it spikes anywhere interestingly.
BrumEmoMap
POSTED IN future web, geodata, social media, twitter | TAGS : conversational psychogeography, emotion, geodata, map, mashup, twitter 1 June 2009
A wonderful and quick mash-up of Twitter and Flickr data, mapped with Yahoo, BrumEmoMap is a great example of the first thread of my Conversational Psychogeography idea. It allows people to tag place with emotion by using tweets or Flickr photos:
While it isn’t doing anything with the data — yet — the power comes from the way a folksonomy of location can evolve even on services (like Twitter) that don’t offer it directly. The deliberate placement and collaborative ethos may open the path to really usable data being collected. Very interesting.
Seventeen things that people are actually saying when they retweet others – meish dot org: life, unfolding
POSTED IN del.icio.us | TAGS : retweeting, twitter, work 20 May 2009
"Retweeting (that is, repeating someone else’s tweet, with attribution) has emerged from daily twittering habits and has become part of Twitter’s cultural vocabulary. The idea of rebroadcasting something interesting/funny you’ve spotted isn’t new, and the custom of acknowledging your sources isn’t particularly revolutionary either, but what is interesting is that not all retweets (RTs) are alike." [link]
Twitter Replies
POSTED IN twitter | TAGS : fixreplies, replies, twitter 13 May 2009
A good while ago I wrote a long post about problems with the Twitter @reply system — Twitter it seems have been trying to fix this, but causing problems (see #fixreplies). I may humbly suggest that the now updated post is worth a read.
The Twitterlizer & Digital Inclusion
POSTED IN Conferences & Talks, my projects, social media work | TAGS : digitally inculded, london, twitter, we share stuff 23 April 2009
Last week I used a Sweetcron installation, a red pen, some cardboard and scissors to build The Twitterlizer (excuse the American spelling). It aggregates mentions of the phrase “digitally included” from across the social web, YouTube, flickr, 12 seconds, blogs, Twitter — especially Twitter, if you’re logged in to Twitter it will even tweet for you with one click.
The aim is to use it to persuade other people to help someone else understand something on the web, and we’re using Twitter as the main thrust because it is so simple. It’s a little trite, and people will in no way really be “digitally included” just because they’ve tweeted — but it’s a start and a start of a helping relationship. If you’re happy to show someone Twitter, you’ll be happy to show them all sorts of useful stuff — and hopefully they’ll be happy to ask for help.
It’s all part of the social enterprise I’m involved with — We Share Stuff — we believe that using IT to share experiences and make connections is a far better way to get people able to use the technology than any formal training or certificate. Social interaction is a much bigger driver than a job using a spreadsheet.
We’re running an event at the National Digital Inclusion Conference – Mon 27th and Tues 28th – in London. So if you’re going to that please stop by and say hello. If you’re interested in digital inclusion but can’t afford the (very high) cost of attendance then we’re also hosting a FREE fringe event on the Monday evening in Westminster, come along and meet us, hopefully as many interested delegates as we can grab, and others who are interested in really doing something to share their knowledge and experience. See more details on www.twitterlizer.com.
If you can’t make it to London, then give us a tweet, and digitally include someone too.
