In the music business, timing is everything. Yet with thousands of promotions and millions of fans spread out geographically and across networks, it can be difficult
to break through.
So how can artists and labels protect their music assets and connect with the best, most engaged fans? Continue reading
We were thrilled when our client Human Rights Watch surpassed 250,000 followers on Twitter, and in honor of that extraordinary milestone, we wanted to take you inside their growth on Twitter and how they’ve utilized SocialFlow to achieve it.
For over 30 years, Human Rights Watch (@HRW) has fulfilled a vital role calling attention to abuses and oppression in countless regions around the globe. Roughly a year ago, when Human Rights Watch was ready to ramp up their social media presence, they turned to SocialFlow, hoping that optimized publishing would help their fledgling efforts on Twitter gain rapid momentum.
Objective
In their efforts to defend and protect human rights worldwide, Human Rights Watch produces over 100 reports and approximately 800 press releases annually. When it came time to develop a social media plan, “we wanted to wait for the space to mature a bit before we jumped in,” Enrique Piraces, Senior Online Strategist said of the organization’s attitude toward determining how tools like Facebook and Twitter would complement existing efforts. They felt that SocialFlow was the right tool to help them parcel out a rich store of content. Continue reading
Hashtags have emerged as a way to mark keywords, topics, commentary or even add snark to content posted on Twitter. Adding the hash character (#) to the beginning of any word attaches the posted text to a wider conversation. For example, using the #immigration hashtag in the midst of a post on the topic of immigration exposes it to a wider audience, especially as it becomes hotter during the GOP primaries. Hashtags are being embraced by the political class as a way to both connect with their audiences but also battle with their opponents. Especially this year, we’re seeing a surge in hashtag usage leading to the 2012 US elections.
Looking at hashtag usage over time sheds light on how people’s perceptions of candidates are reflected through the language that they use. That’s exactly what we set out to track, analyzing over 8500 hashtags used over the past 3 weeks associated with each Republican candidate.
At SocialFlow we analyze the resonance of language within audiences by looking at historical and realtime language used in posts. We develop an understanding for people’s perception on any given topic, mapping out relationships between terms and topics amongst different audiences. We learn which topics are central, who the conversational outliers are and what topics act as bridges between different sides of the spectrum.
Network graph of all hashtags used in reference with GOP candidates over the past 3 weeks.
From the data one learns that people’s perception of GOP candidates are certainly reflected through not only the language they use on Twitter, but also the frequency and combination of terms. In the graph above, each color represents connections between the candidate and associated hashtags. Every time a hashtag is published with a reference to a candidate in a tweet we added an edge to the graph. Every time hashtags appear with other hashtags, we also added an edge between them. The larger each node, the more times it appeared in tweets. Finally, we run a force-directed algorithm to organize the graph such that related hashtags appear closer. Continue reading
Last night I had the honor to lead the first BetaLabs class. BetaLabs is an effort organized by product designer extraordinaire Summer Bedard, an internal Betaworks skill-sharing class that takes place every two weeks. I wanted to give a class that’ll utilize python to access the Twitter API, grab some interesting data, and visualize it. The necessary code was provided, and participants got a list of downloads and installs that needed to happen before the class. Within two hours, everyone was playing with a graph based on data that they grabbed from the Twitter API!
Friend of SocialFlow Ricky Powell recently celebrated his 50th birthday with a mention in Page 6, and to mark the occasion, we thought we’d take you inside a special collaboration the legendary hip hop photographer made with the team at SocialFlow. Continue reading
The SocialFlow research team is looking for graduate level interns to join our group this summer. For these positions we primarily looking for computer science or information studies PhD or Masters students. If you’re passionate about data, dream of social graphs and are obsessed with topic classification, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing or data visualization, this opportunity is for you! Continue reading
What does Gatorade have to do with chips? How many people follow both Justin Beiber and the Economist? Which music artists should Pepsi invest in based on what their audience cares about? Which major news audience showed a disproportionate amount of interest in the term “transgendered clownfish”? Continue reading
Currently there are efforts underway to rush the passage of PIPA and SOPA through Congress with no participation from the tech industry. Without listening to the participants who would inform the process, Congress risks passing very damaging legislation which could harm every American’s right to privacy, as well as stifle innovation within the tech community.
Today, we at SocialFlow join a number of other concerned partners in the tech community in urging you to write your congressional representation or blog about the proposed PIPA and SOPA legislative process.
You can find out more at the Protect Innovation website or reading Vint Certf’s article here.
Thank you,
Your Friends at SocialFlow
Today, the MIT Technology Review reports on SocialFlow’s #OccupyWallStreet analysis, and the role of optimization in messages that really take hold:
For Lotan, single tweets or hashtags that spread virally are welcome deluges of data that can shed light on how and why messages spread beyond their original author’s network. There is no recipe for virality, he says, but there is plenty of room for optimization.
