TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

research

Netinkers: a wikidot for research about Twitter

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Yesterday, Chris Hambly of Social Media Mafia circulatd the link to an online research paper about Twitter. In brief, this research downloaded the last 3201 tweets of about 300K users.  Twitter keeps only our last 3201 tweets.

200K were effectively  non-users and the remainder provided a sample of network connections for an ‘average’ period of 7 months.

This article caught the imagination of the Twittersphere.  One research finding in particular caught people’s eye: that we don’t have conversations with everyone in our Twitter stream.

I would have thought that’s obvious myself.  I am also uneasy about the use of the expression ‘average’ without co-reporting the distribution of the data.

This is fun research though. The authors, Huberman, Romero and Wu (2009) make the point that Twitter offers a brilliant opportunty to uplift digitalised network data and learn something about social networks.

That’s my ambition.  I want to become a lot more fluent in social network theory.  I’ve sent up a wiki & forum, Netinkers, where like-minded people can congregate, initially to parse the Huberman article and then to add others and to suggest lines of research.  We may not have the time and resources to do the research ourselves, but students might.  They are always on the lookout for ‘doable’ projects.

See you over there when you feel in a scholarly mood. The password is ‘playful’.

Essential viewing for content providers

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It’s not often I would say a video is essential, but not only is this keynote by USC Annenberg Professor Jeffrey Cole full of brilliant comments and quotes, but after eight years of research in 20 countries, he’s got the stats to back them all up.

Found via the also brilliant Gerd Leonhard.

Interesting take-out from new social network research

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A new report from Netpop Research has some interesting data (and apparently it’s free until Jan 31, 2009 if you register at Netpop). (Hat tip to ReadWriteWeb)

I want to take a look in more detail, but some of the big points:

  • 105 million Americans (76% of broadband users aged 13+) contribute online. 40 million (29%) contribute to social networks.
  • Typical networker is female (57%), 18-29, either employed or studying, and single.
  • On average they connect with 18 people on a one-to-one basis each week and 110 people on a one-to-many basis.
  • Social networkers spend an average of $101 online, non social networks spend $80.
  • Broadband subscribers who don’t contribute to social networks tend to be male (57%), married (57%), and older. They also connect with less than 3 people online per week.

The last group sounds a lot like the stereotypical boss of a large company, which is why it’s so important for communication and ways to demonstrate the value of social networking, communication and conversation. And an extra $21 per person is the kind of information that helps!

I’m downloading the report now for a deeper look.

Every Single One of Us should look at Every Single One of Us

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I’m learning that you can always rely on someone like Jonathan MacDonald going that bit further! And he’s certainly doing that by driving a new movement with a simple aim ‘making communication better‘. It’s well worth taking a look at Every Single One of Us for the whole story, and then making sure you subscribe to hear about any updates.

From Every Single One of Us:

The world we are now in, will show an astronomical shift in commercial budget toward this area – but currently, few people know for sure how this can come about.

There are a number of reasons why that is and this movement proposes the following 4:

  • A lack of pertinent information
  • A lack of understanding how to interpret information
  • A lack of will to action on information
  • A lack of skill to action on information

Taking these 4 points and applying them to any other nascent situation, we see they are common.

In our ‘No Way Back From Here’ volume, we will apply these 4 points )although some may already have one or more covered).

For example, you may have the will to action on information and a great deal of skill, however there may be gaps in the understanding or access levels. The gun is loaded, you know how to fire it, but why, at whom and when?

Alternatively, you may have the world’s leading information from research and popular opinion, but lack the will or skill to action anything.

Its all OK. We are all ‘right’.

It doesn’t matter which part you are involved with or which part you are ‘covered’ on. We can move things forward together – but this movement proposes we first need a way to ensure we all have access to the information required for us to collectively interpret it (or at least, those that wish to).

Once we have this, we can help others gain the will to action and the skills to do so (if they desire).

He’s also laid out a 7 step plan to achieve this, as well as initial activities within step 1 – covering the lay of the land. It includes a major research project, a series of TV interviews, an ongoing series of conferences, seminars, workshops and master-classes, information gathering and looking at VRM.

I think this is probably one of the movements with the clearest idea of purpose and direction, and possibly most likely to succeed in achieving some sizeable goals, judging by the starting point. The biggest risk might be Jonathan exhausting the rest of us….

Seriously, go to http://www.everysingleoneofus.com right now, if you haven’t already. And take some time to look at what’s being established…

Is microblogging the ultimate test for an idea?

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While I was offline and on holiday, I started thinking about permanence and the ‘half-life’ of content and ideas. Is print a better medium for archiving content, in the event all electronic systems are turned off or destroyed in a catastrophe? Or is the electronic medium far better for simply getting an idea into the world, where it may take on a life of it’s own?

Originally it was a comparison between print and blogging, but reading some recent posts from bloggers listing referrals, I noticed how many were crediting large numbers of referrals from Twitter as a direct result of friends and followers retweeting their messages.

That struck a chord, as I tend to be online between 9am and midnight (sometimes 1 or 2am) so I get to see various timezones conversing – and I wonder how much I miss when I’m sleeping or avoiding microblogging to concentrate on other tasks. Unless I set up RSS feeds for every possible keyword, and constantly trawl through archives, there’s always going to be a huge amount of content that is published when I’m not there to see it – and the same it true for almost everyone using microblogging.

Which is why microblogging is probably the best test of a concept or an idea. Not only do you have to fit the pitch into 140 characters, but for it to reach a significant number of relevant people around the globe it needs to be retweeted by a significant number – easy if you have thousands of followers, but unless you’re in the top few Tweeters, for example, it’s purely down to the strength of your idea.

That’s much different to blogging, as tools like RSS are effective at archiving days or weeks of content which can be scanned fairly quickly and efficiently. And it’s obviously different to the print mechanisms of old.

It’s another benefit of the microformat over the longform for getting quicker feedback and response on an idea – although I’d hesitate to drop an entire simply down to a lack of responses – simple requests for messages I’ve posted have had a response rate of around 8% of my followers within an hour or so, which is pretty damn impressive, but if the idea is relevant to the other 90% it might take a while to reach them!

Note: Thinking about it after finishing this post, there may be the subconcious influence of this post by Dave Cushman, regarding responses on Twitter and Focus Groups vs Communities of Purpose.

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