Social Media Conversation Analyst
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02 Jan 09 Updated: frequently Twittered URLs

I’ve added the necessary code to report on frequently posted URLs by day, so here’s an updated list of the URLs people have been frequently Twittering since yesterday (beginning 12:01 New Years Day).  Some of these were in the previous list, but some are new.  Comparing the list from day to day gives an idea of what’s gaining momentum.  I’ll be adding an hour-of-day column to the database, too, to get finer-grained acceleration reporting.  This is starting to come together into something I’ll automate soon, it looks like.
Anybody aware of a similar list that I can compare for a reality check?  I’m wondering if my sampling is intelligent enough to catch most, if not all, of the highly popular URLs being Twittered.
  1. 1 URL(s), 529 users: http://twitter.com/toni_stewart/statuses/1083734925
  2. 1 URL(s), 358 users: http://twply.com/
  3. 1 URL(s), 290 users: http://happytweets.com
  4. 1 URL(s), 258 users: http://water.alltop.com/
  5. 1 URL(s), 257 users: http://twitter.com/gfxmonk/statuses/1083729313
  6. 1 URL(s), 213 users: http://twit.pix.ly
  7. 10 URL(s), 121 users: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-20-twitter-posts-of-2008/8221/
  8. 13 URL(s), 120 users: http://www.copyblogger.com/grow-business-twitter/
  9. 2 URL(s), 120 users: http://dcortesi.com/tools/my-first-follow/
  10. 10 URL(s), 113 users: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/31/top-social-media-sites-of-2008-facebook-still-rising/
  11. 1 URL(s), 113 users: http://nutrition.alltop.com/
  12. 8 URL(s), 107 users: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/27-blogging-secrets-to-power-your-community/
  13. 7 URL(s), 105 users: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/30/large-form-ipod-touch-to-launch-in-fall-09/
  14. 1 URL(s), 99 users: http://mrtweet.net?c=12
  15. 6 URL(s), 92 users: http://www.prblogger.com/2008/12/60-new-york-times-profiles-on-twitter/
  16. 7 URL(s), 73 users: http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/12/31/all-zune-30s-crapping-out/
  17. 6 URL(s), 71 users: http://mashable.com/2008/12/30/how-to-simplify/
  18. 4 URL(s), 65 users: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/israel_and_gaza.html
  19. 6 URL(s), 63 users: http://gizmodo.com/5121311/30gb-zunes-failing-everywhere-all-at-once
  20. 1 URL(s), 58 users: http://www.zuneboards.com/forums/zune-news/38143-cause-zune-30-leapyear-problem-isolated.html
  21. 3 URL(s), 57 users: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/israels-info-wa.html
  22. 5 URL(s), 54 users: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html
  23. 1 URL(s), 54 users: http://twoogie.com/
  24. 3 URL(s), 51 users: http://mashable.com/2009/01/01/twitter-user-types/
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01 Jan 09 Twitter: Frequently cited URLs, Part 2

Following up on my last post, here’s the up-to-date list of URLs are are frequently cited on Twitter, among the pages and people that my scraper has explored.  (Look down a few posts to see how it is somewhat intelligently exploring.)  The list shows how many URL variations are being used (an indicator of how many people independently decide to tweet about the page) and how many people have included a URL in their tweets in the last few days.

The list appears below, ranked by the number of users citing the URL.  Below that is a list of URLs that had at least 50 cites, ranked by the number of unique  URLs, which would be the way to do it if you wanted to find hot topics that people are finding independently of each other.  

  1. 1 URL(s), 650 users: http://twitter.com/toni_stewart/statuses/1083734925 
  2. 3 URL(s), 319 users: http://dcortesi.com/tools/my-first-follow/
  3. 1 URL(s), 273 users: http://happytweets.com
  4. 1 URL(s), 258 users: http://water.alltop.com/
  5. 1 URL(s), 183 users: http://twit.pix.ly
  6. 11 URL(s), 170 users: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-20-twitter-posts-of-2008/8221/
  7. 7 URL(s), 128 users: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/30/large-form-ipod-touch-to-launch-in-fall-09/
  8. 1 URL(s), 116 users: http://twply.com/
  9. 4 URL(s), 115 users: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/social-media-is-no-place-for-robot-behavior/
  10. 1 URL(s), 106 users: http://good-news.alltop.com/
  11. 6 URL(s), 104 users: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html
  12. 1 URL(s), 104 users: http://twitter.com/gfxmonk/statuses/1083729313
  13. 11 URL(s), 99 users: http://www.copyblogger.com/grow-business-twitter/
  14. 6 URL(s), 99 users: http://www.prblogger.com/2008/12/60-new-york-times-profiles-on-twitter/
  15. 6 URL(s), 97 users: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/27-blogging-secrets-to-power-your-community/
  16. 3 URL(s), 96 users: http://tweetree.com/
  17. 1 URL(s), 88 users: http://mrtweet.net?c=11!
  18. 1 URL(s), 85 users: http://nutrition.alltop.com/
  19. 9 URL(s), 82 users: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/31/top-social-media-sites-of-2008-facebook-still-rising/
  20. 6 URL(s), 81 users: http://www.twitip.com/why-twitter-will-go-mainstream-in-2009/
  21. 7 URL(s), 73 users: http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/12/31/all-zune-30s-crapping-out/
  22. 5 URL(s), 71 users: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3114/3141139302_45d5b3b0a6_o.jpg
  23. 4 URL(s), 71 users: http://mashable.com/2008/12/27/how-to-2008/
  24. 3 URL(s), 71 users: http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/15-useful-tools-for-wordpress-bloggers/
  25. 3 URL(s), 71 users: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/28/dmfail-another-reason-to-just-not-send-private-messages-on-twitter/
  26. 4 URL(s), 68 users: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/israels-info-wa.html
  27. 8 URL(s), 67 users: http://mashable.com/2008/12/29/brand-reputation-monitoring-tools/
  28. 7 URL(s), 66 users: http://www10.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html?_r=5
  29. 4 URL(s), 66 users: http://crunchies2008.techcrunch.com/votes/
  30. 6 URL(s), 65 users: http://mashable.com/2008/12/30/how-to-simplify/
  31. 6 URL(s), 64 users: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/28/the-future-of-social-search-or-why-google-should-buy-facebook/
  32. 3 URL(s), 63 users: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2009_web_predictions.php
  33. 6 URL(s), 61 users: http://mashable.com/2008/12/29/benefits-of-social-media-marketing/
  34. 6 URL(s), 60 users: http://gizmodo.com/5121311/30gb-zunes-failing-everywhere-all-at-once
  35. 4 URL(s), 56 users: http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/12/30/md5-collision-creates-rogue-certificate-authority/
  36. 4 URL(s), 56 users: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/29/its-not-how-many-followers-you-have-that-counts-its-how-many-times-you-get-retweeted/
  37. 4 URL(s), 56 users: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/30/netflix-adobe-google-make-best-places-to-work-list-att-ebay-radioshack-among-the-worst/
  38. 4 URL(s), 55 users: http://mashable.com/2008/12/30/california-budget-crisis/
  39. 3 URL(s), 54 users: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/free-ebook-using-the-social-web-to-find-work/
  40. 1 URL(s), 54 users: http://tweetree.com
  41. 4 URL(s), 53 users: http://www.sociableblog.com/2008/12/29/top-twitter-tools-2009/
  42. 1 URL(s), 53 users: http://twinfluence.com
  43. 4 URL(s), 51 users: http://gizmodo.com/5120687/steve-jobs-health-declining-rapidly-reason-for-macworld-cancellation
  44. 1 URL(s), 51 users: http://twoogie.com/
  45. 6 URL(s), 50 users: http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/21-settings-techniques-and-rules-all-new-camera-owners-should-know/
  46. 3 URL(s), 50 users: http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/
  47. 2 URL(s), 50 users: http://quizible.com/quiz/how-web-2-are-you/22

Here’s the list ranked by the number of unique URLs, for those that were cited by at least 50 users.

  1. 11 URLs, 170 users: “http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-20-twitter-posts-of-2008/8221/
  2. 11 URLs, 99 users: “http://www.copyblogger.com/grow-business-twitter/
  3. 9 URLs, 82 users: “http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/31/top-social-media-sites-of-2008-facebook-still-rising/
  4. 8 URLs, 67 users: “http://mashable.com/2008/12/29/brand-reputation-monitoring-tools/
  5. 7 URLs, 128 users: “http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/30/large-form-ipod-touch-to-launch-in-fall-09/
  6. 7 URLs, 73 users: “http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/12/31/all-zune-30s-crapping-out/
  7. 7 URLs, 66 users: “http://www10.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html?_r=5
  8. 6 URLs, 104 users: “http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html
  9. 6 URLs, 99 users: “http://www.prblogger.com/2008/12/60-new-york-times-profiles-on-twitter/
  10. 6 URLs, 97 users: “http://www.chrisbrogan.com/27-blogging-secrets-to-power-your-community/
  11. 6 URLs, 81 users: “http://www.twitip.com/why-twitter-will-go-mainstream-in-2009/
  12. 6 URLs, 65 users: “http://mashable.com/2008/12/30/how-to-simplify/
  13. 6 URLs, 64 users: “http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/28/the-future-of-social-search-or-why-google-should-buy-facebook/
  14. 6 URLs, 61 users: “http://mashable.com/2008/12/29/benefits-of-social-media-marketing/
  15. 6 URLs, 60 users: “http://gizmodo.com/5121311/30gb-zunes-failing-everywhere-all-at-once
  16. 5 URLs, 71 users: “http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3114/3141139302_45d5b3b0a6_o.jpg
  17. 4 URLs, 115 users: “http://www.chrisbrogan.com/social-media-is-no-place-for-robot-behavior/
  18. 4 URLs, 71 users: “http://mashable.com/2008/12/27/how-to-2008/
  19. 4 URLs, 68 users: “http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/israels-info-wa.html
  20. 4 URLs, 66 users: “http://crunchies2008.techcrunch.com/votes/
  21. 4 URLs, 56 users: “http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/12/30/md5-collision-creates-rogue-certificate-authority/
  22. 4 URLs, 56 users: “http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/29/its-not-how-many-followers-you-have-that-counts-its-how-many-times-you-get-retweeted/
  23. 4 URLs, 56 users: “http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/30/netflix-adobe-google-make-best-places-to-work-list-att-ebay-radioshack-among-the-worst/
  24. 4 URLs, 55 users: “http://mashable.com/2008/12/30/california-budget-crisis/
  25. 4 URLs, 53 users: “http://www.sociableblog.com/2008/12/29/top-twitter-tools-2009/
  26. 4 URLs, 51 users: “http://gizmodo.com/5120687/steve-jobs-health-declining-rapidly-reason-for-macworld-cancellation
  27. 3 URLs, 319 users: “http://dcortesi.com/tools/my-first-follow/
  28. 3 URLs, 96 users: “http://tweetree.com/
  29. 3 URLs, 71 users: “http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/15-useful-tools-for-wordpress-bloggers/
  30. 3 URLs, 71 users: “http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/28/dmfail-another-reason-to-just-not-send-private-messages-on-twitter/
  31. 3 URLs, 63 users: “http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2009_web_predictions.php
  32. 3 URLs, 54 users: “http://www.chrisbrogan.com/free-ebook-using-the-social-web-to-find-work/
  33. 1 URLs, 650 users: “http://twitter.com/toni_stewart/statuses/1083734925
  34. 1 URLs, 273 users: “http://happytweets.com
  35. 1 URLs, 258 users: “http://water.alltop.com/
  36. 1 URLs, 183 users: “http://twit.pix.ly
  37. 1 URLs, 116 users: “http://twply.com/
  38. 1 URLs, 106 users: “http://good-news.alltop.com/
  39. 1 URLs, 104 users: “http://twitter.com/gfxmonk/statuses/1083729313
  40. 1 URLs, 88 users: “http://mrtweet.net?c=11!
  41. 1 URLs, 85 users: “http://nutrition.alltop.com/
  42. 1 URLs, 54 users: “http://tweetree.com
  43. 1 URLs, 53 users: “http://twinfluence.com
  44. 1 URLs, 51 users: “http://twoogie.com/

Note:  There actually were a large number of unique URLs that point back to Twitter home page and Facebook, but I think that they didn’t resolve properly.  In the case of Facebook, I suspect a second redirect is taking place because they all resolved to the login page.  As for the ones that point back to the Twitter home page, I don’t know what’s going on there.  User error, perhaps, but I’ll have to dig deeper.

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01 Jan 09 Twitter: Recent frequently cited URLs

My Twitter scraper allows me to see which web pages are being cited by the most people (out of the relatively small, but closely related, sample of Twitterers that it has explored). I can see how many variants of “shrunken” URLs are pointing to the same page, which gives a rough idea of how many people are independently finding and citing a page.

Below is a list of people who recently cited How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business in a tweet.  This was one of the most widely cited URLs with a relatively high number of URL variations that my scraper found over the last few days.

This page was cited by 98 people* with 11 URL variations.  They appear below, in chronological order with some typographic hints.  Each unique shrunken URL is color-coded, which indicates that those people are near one another in the Twitter social network.  That’s especially cool because it did not require scraping through all of their followers to figure out, which would have consumed far more resources.  The publication time is underlined for the first person who used each unique URL.  Those people are likely to be opinion leaders, particularly if they created the shrunken URL (which a Google on the URL would be likely to reveal).  The people who tweeted the URLs earlier are more likely to be opinion leaders, since there are more others who may have been influenced by them.

In addition to identifying hot topics and cliques within the social network, this is also a means of finding people who might be worth following, given that the first people to cite a URL that becomes popular are either influential or are good at spotting trends early (a distinction that can be impossible to resolve).

  • prblogs (http://tinyurl.com/7lmjsv – 2008-12-31 18:21:33)
  • copyblogger (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 18:28:49)
  • DrimoN (http://tinyurl.com/7lmjsv – 2008-12-31 18:35:14)
  • BSwafford (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 18:46:19)
  • mollermarketing (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 18:51:04)
  • ronhekier (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 - 2008-12-31 18:52:17)
  • SimonFord (http://tinyurl.com/7lmjsv – 2008-12-31 18:56:42)
  • ZnaTrainer (http://ping.fm/w6Fk7 – 2008-12-31 19:06:35)
  • jimsharp (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 19:09:53)
  • thomaspower (http://ff.im/-s1Dm – 2008-12-31 19:21:02)
  • marykw (http://ping.fm/w6Fk7 – 2008-12-31 19:24:58)
  • ducttape (http://fleck.com/BBA3L - 2008-12-31 19:43:01)
  • SuzanneBHarris (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 19:47:14)
  • eseiberling (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 19:47:27)
  • TheVCF (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 19:47:55)
  • redkitedesign (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 19:50:15)
  • PageSage (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 19:50:51)
  • jeaniemarshall (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 19:51:31)
  • ParrotGuy (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 19:52:21)
  • axsystechgroup (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 19:54:32)
  • silentbutsmart (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 19:54:40)
  • lilyhill (http://tinyurl.com/7lmjsv – 2008-12-31 20:10:34)
  • dhelbig (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 20:22:10)
  • TheTeliosGroup (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 20:23:14)
  • TommOH (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:27:58)
  • TweetThinking (http://tinyurl.com/Twitter4Biz - 2008-12-31 20:29:08)
  • appirio_kirk (http://fleck.com/BBA3L - 2008-12-31 20:33:20)
  • stevebuttry (http://bit.ly/UDXw – 2008-12-31 20:35:03)
  • lizstrauss (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:35:38)
  • heathermilligan (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:36:11)
  • soultravelers3 (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:36:46)
  • jerryroberts (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:38:20)
  • roylan (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 20:38:25)
  • brentrinehart (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 20:38:38)
  • LynnMcFarlane (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 20:39:34)
  • bmckay (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 20:40:25)
  • AnnFeinstein (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:42:08)
  • timage (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:43:56)
  • witchlinks (http://tinyurl.com/7lmjsv – 2008-12-31 20:45:30)
  • franswaa (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:46:53)
  • EGoddess (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:47:48)
  • franswaa (http://ff.im/-s4fF – 2008-12-31 20:48:28)
  • michellerafter (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 20:50:15)
  • lisahickey (http://ping.fm/w6Fk7 – 2008-12-31 20:52:56)
  • ChadALevitt (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 20:54:16)
  • techandlife (http://tinyurl.com/Twitter4Biz – 2008-12-31 20:56:15)
  • damphoux (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 20:57:04)
  • trishlambert (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 21:01:17)
  • cocoagal (http://bit.ly/UDXw – 2008-12-31 21:02:30)
  • NewEvolution (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 21:03:29)
  • shinils (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 21:05:04)
  • brettbittner (http://fleck.com/BBA3L – 2008-12-31 21:10:48)
  • twittea (http://twurl.nl/wmjiuv – 2008-12-31 21:11:26)
  • twittea (http://twurl.nl/c1y6ur – 2008-12-31 21:11:27)
  • nicknanton (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 21:20:53)
  • ZaTaylor (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 21:23:30)
  • poneal (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 21:35:34)
  • TracyOConnor (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 21:35:59)
  • Net2 (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 21:50:21)
  • brianjcarroll (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 21:50:40)
  • blogsir (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 21:52:11)
  • JesseNewhart (http://bit.ly/UDXw – 2008-12-31 21:54:42)
  • integrateit (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2008-12-31 21:57:41)
  • angelcaido666x (http://bit.ly/UDXw – 2008-12-31 22:00:08)
  • Rick__S (http://bit.ly/UDXw – 2008-12-31 22:19:16)
  • mgco (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 23:48:40)
  • dickmansfield (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2008-12-31 23:52:16)
  • indyfromoz (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 00:36:15)
  • CindyKing (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2009-01-01 00:48:32)
  • namtrok (http://tinyurl.com/Twitter4Biz – 2009-01-01 01:52:43)
  • MicheleTune (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 03:51:29)
  • Aaron111 (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 05:47:46)
  • judithstephens (http://bit.ly/UDXw – 2009-01-01 05:56:58)
  • pincock (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 07:59:58)
  • Mike_Stelzner (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 08:03:05)
  • Phil_Adams (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 - 2009-01-01 09:38:16)
  • problogger (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 11:03:06)
  • jamesramya (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 11:04:36)
  • RicRaftis (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 11:08:23)
  • CeciliaEdwards (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 11:19:30)
  • CindyKing (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 11:20:08)
  • RicRaftis (http://bit.ly/UDXw – 2009-01-01 11:23:44)
  • gideonshalwick (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 11:48:58)
  • TwitLinksRSS (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 11:49:29)
  • ChristinePilch (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 13:14:39)
  • neuralmarket (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 13:29:49)
  • laretal (http://ping.fm/w6Fk7 – 2009-01-01 13:31:39)
  • jbeardsley (http://bit.ly/UDXw – 2009-01-01 13:54:13)
  • imawriter (http://ping.fm/w6Fk7 – 2009-01-01 14:36:15)
  • divitodesign (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 15:07:50)
  • stelzner (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 16:06:36)
  • natthedem (http://is.gd/eiOS – 2009-01-01 16:28:04)
  • amrithallan (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 16:36:53)
  • alanlhammond (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 16:40:34)
  • _McLaughlin (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 16:52:09)
  • beulahgg (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 17:12:38)
  • rebeccacoleman (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 17:26:01)
  • Rwilliard (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 17:29:30)
  • BIMarcom (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 20:01:17)
  • Terri_Rylander (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 20:01:27)
  • debbiestier (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 20:32:03)
  • SternalPR (http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 – 2009-01-01 20:33:12)

* I’m getting the first 100 search results for each URL, which means that for each “shrunken” url with 100 or fewer results, they are comprehensive.  However, there’s no way to know, short of looking at the entire Twitter timeline and resolving all the URLs, if there are more people citing the same page.  I’m planning to use the words associated with the URLs to do further searches to discover more people who cited popular pages.

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19 Dec 08 Better Twitter-WordPress integration here now

I have switched from hashtags.org to Twemes for the Twitter tag feed for web analytics (#wa) that appears in the sidebar. Sorry, hashtags, but you just weren’t reliable.

I have also added a Flash widget for Twitter, showing my tweets, to the top of the sidebar. It’s kind of flashy, so I might switch to the text version.

Finally, I have added TwitThis (shouldn’t that be “TweetThis”?) at the bottom of each post, allowing you, my fine readers, to Tweet, with ease, I hope, any post you choose.

Ah, the joy of actually using social media!

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12 Dec 08 Admin notes

You no longer have to register to comment here… I didn’t realize that was set until a friend told me last night at the social media Tweetup.  Your first comment will be automatically held for moderation.

The Twitter feeds on the right side of the page don’t seem to be working well.  Tweets are missing from my feed; the web analytics (#wa) tag tracker feed from hashtags.org seems to be unreliable.

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10 Dec 08 A couple of notes about this blog

With gratitude toward those who have given me feedback about this blog… I just changed the RSS feed to supply the full text of posts, rather than truncated versions.

I was asked off-line about the Google ads that appear here.  They’re not here to make money (not that I have any real objections), they’re here so that I can see what happens, since I’m always interested in the relationship between social media and advertising.

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09 Dec 08 What business problem are we solving?

“Technology in search of a problem,” is a longstanding Silicon Valley standard criticism of companies with smart people who build cool stuff but fail to generate revenue. Sometimes it seems like the entire world of web analytics could be described that way. The squishier the metrics definitions are (prime example: “engagement”), the more accurate the description is.

The most important word in that description is “a.” In other words, find just one problem to solve at a time, rather than a dozen. This is a normal problem in a developing environment, where inventors are driving. The problem is that people who are good at inventing products and services are also good at seeing problems they can solve, so they do a lot of things moderately well and excel at none. In the day-to-day work of web analytics, this often appears as “data smog,” a term I first encountered in Actionable Web Analytics, which credits it to David Schenk.

Somebody involved in every analytics effort absolutely needs to be talking to the ultimate customer, the one who is actually generating revenue, to understand their business. At the very least, analytics should address the specific business problem a customer knows it has. Ideally, it goes further and sees solutions or opportunities that the customer didn’t realize that data could address.

In other words, I think it is a mistake to just ask or settle for being told what numbers to deliver. Ask why the numbers are needed. Ask for the goals and their priorities so that you can set analysis priorities. For example, the goal is support, the speed of responses in the social network matters a lot more than when the goal is loyalty.

If there is no way around the need for a lot of measurements, fight data smog by knowing your priorities and packaging the data with some sort of drill-down that puts the most important numbers on top. This is where the dashboard idea becomes critical – hide the complexity behind a one-page (or less) summary. The fact is that even when people think they want complexity, they almost never do. I created a set of Excel-based dashboards with deep drill-down… and I’ll bet that hardly anyone used more than a small percentage of what was there. But it was there if they wanted it and that keeps people happy.

All of this adds up to one word: focus. A venture capitalist friend gave me a mantra that stuck: the five most important things (for startups, but it applies to innovation in general) are focus, focus, focus, distribution and focus.

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07 Dec 08 More friends means more Twittering

Jeremiah tweeted about an HP Labs paper that show that the more friends and followers an active Twitter user has, the more they’ll post.  The number of friends was more significant than the number of followers.  I instantly found myself wondering if the numbers would correlate as well if the number of followers was not visible to users.  This goes back to what I wrote the other day about treating a web analytics data warehouse as part of the production system.  “Number of followers” is a simple metric, but it is a kind of feedback that isn’t so easily available in other contexts.  On the web, counting unique visitors is among the most wretched of web metrics; counting unique RSS subscribers is muddied by aggregation.

The HP paper concludes that most of the relationships identified in a social network are weak; the strong social network, the real friendships, are hidden within it.  Therefore, the authors argue, if you’re going to do viral marketing, you have to discover and tap into that hidden, more deeply connected network.  I think they went too far there.

They assume that only the strongest friendships can mediate viral ideas.  Why?.  I don’t think the study really addresses that question.  If you want to see the flow of influence through the network, you can’t just look at who is communicating with whom, you have to look at how people and network respond to communications.

A former intelligence guy explained it to me with a Cold War example.  If you see a pattern that when radio station X transmits, a large part of the Soviet Navy suddenly changes direction, you can guess that X is a command and control center.  That’s traffic analysis at its simplest.

In a network like Twitter, the equivalent would be to observe a correlation between person X’s posts and some measure of network activation, particularly something like “re-tweeting,” which has little cause-and-effect ambiguity.

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06 Dec 08 I think I want this job

Forrester is looking to hire a social media analyst. As I just wrote to Jeremiah Owyang, I think I would excel at that job and would love doing it. Am I crazy to blog about this? Maybe not. It’s one way to make it clear that I don’t tell every prospective employer that I would excel at and love their open position. Those of you who have known me for a long time know that I was a very successful industry analyst, first to declare that multimedia computing would be the Next Big Thing. I think I’m fairly good at seeing where the industry is going, sometimes a bit too far ahead of the curve.

I started a buzz measurement company before most people even saw the need for it. Because we were first, I have four patents for that work and five applications pending. Not that I’m a big fan of software patents, but investors sure like them and I liked having investors. I jumped into social media long before it became the Next Big Thing, tracking the open source movement by analyzing social media, then joining a social media agency when hardly any such companies existed.

I actually tried to start a social media buzz measurement company much earlier, with a young man named Marc Andreesen, who had just moved to California from Illinois. Smart fellow, I thought, so I took him to lunch. Apparently somebody else thought he was pretty smart, too, and made him a better offer. He has done well.

The same thing happened when I was at Verity and met five guys with a search technology company operating out of a house in Cupertino. I thought they had something terrific and a week or so later, our CEO was offering to acquire them for a lot of cash (Verity had just gone public and had a pile of money to invest). They were also talking to Kleiner Perkins and decided they’d rather start a search service instead of being part of a search technology vendor. That company became Excite and those five guys have done very, very well.

Have lunch with Nick, go make millions. Not a bad consulting motto, perhaps.

Almost forgot – I went to an Oakland As game with Bill Gates and he became a billionaire. I’m not sure that counts, since he was already doing pretty darn well.

Feel free to add a comment here about why Forrester should hire me. Or write to Jeremiah if you think it is unseemly for me to solicit public praise (but if so, you apparently don’t understand how the whole industry analyst thing works).

This has to be the oddest thing I have every published… but I really think I want that job.

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05 Dec 08 Measuring the value of point of view

Perhaps it is acceptable to be satisfied with today’s typical web metrics – page views, visits, conversion, even engagement in its many forms. They give us an idea of who is visiting, what they are doing and give some measure of the pulse of a community. These metrics can reveal informative trends – they certainly can alert us when something is wrong! However, I am not convinced that they show us when things are right.

As I have written here recently, I believe that the Internet’s world-transforming power arises from the incredibly low cost of sharing of points of view. Digitization and network have created information overload and now we get to figure out how to cope with the explosion by packaging and distributing points of view about which information matters.

The Internet arrived in a world where the vast majority of people received the vast majority of their information about the world beyond their immediate experience from advertising-based media, a highly consolidated industry that presented essentially one homogenized point of view – whatever attracted the most eyeballs.

Don’t misunderstand – I’m not arguing that everybody wants to see everybody else’s point of view. Some people aren’t even opinion leaders in their own homes! My argument is that even a relatively small increase in the number of available viewpoints can have a profound impact, especially when thinking is as homogenized as big media tends to be. If you don’t see this happening in today’s world, you aren’t paying attention.

So how do we measure the value of point of view? Start with the assumption that in any community, whether as tightly knit as a private mailing list or as wild and wide open as Facebook and Twitter, there are opinion leaders, people who have more influence than the rest. Figure out who they are by how often and how much others respond to them. Ultimately, I think that line of thinking leads to the idea of memes, ideas that move through community from one person to another. If there is a holy grail in social media analytics, I think it lies in our ability to track memes – in the commercial sphere, ideas about products, companies, brands and so forth – as they move through social media space, regardless of technological boundaries. Most of my work for the last eight years, starting with Opion (whose name came from a misspelling of “opinion” at a brainstorming session; now part of A.C. Nielsen), has been pointed in that direction, tempered by what is possible and what can be funded.

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