Wednesday, February 15th at noon, SocialFlow and Digitas are hosting a lunch and panel discussion for Social Media Week, featuring some leading practitioners in the social space, and hosted by Digiday’s Brian Morrissey.

But we want to hear your secrets too! Whether it’s an app, an attitude or approach, what tool or technique shapes your game in social? To sweeten the deal, we’re giving away a prize to one lucky person who shares their secret weapon in the comments to this blog post, on our Facebook fan page or by tweeting @socialflow with the hashtag #socialweapon.

START DATE: NOW!
DEADLINE: Feb 15, 2012 by 12pm EST
THE PRIZE: A Kindle Fire

The rules:

• Tell us a pithy tale of your “secret weapon” in social media by commenting on this blog post, posting your answer to our Facebook fan page or by tweeting @socialflow with the hashtag #socialweapon

Tweet Ex.“@SocialFlow Sprinkling in popular & relevant hashtags is my #socialweapon”

• Enter by noon, EST, February 15, 2012
• One winner will be chosen at random from all eligible entries and notified by noon EST February 17th
• Please be a US citizen over the age of 18.

To further sweeten the deal for those of you who can make the panel and lunch, we’ll be giving away a few other goodies on site. So make sure to register now!

Stay tuned for a video series from our favorite social media practitioners to hear about their #socialweapon.

We can’t wait to hear from you!

So how can artists and labels protect their music assets and connect with the best, most engaged fans?

On Wednesday, February 22nd, SocialFlow is thrilled to be a part of Social Music Summit @ Digital Music Forum East, where cofounder Mike Perrone will present on these and other topics related to the music industry in the social age. Full details and ticket link are below.

We hope to see you there!

Social Music Summit @ Digital Music Forum East
Wednesday, February 22nd
4:30pm – 4:45pm: Fleeting Assets: The Real Social Opportunity for the Music Industry
Mike Perrone, COO & Co-Founder, SocialFlow
Register here

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.

Solution
Human Rights Watch implemented SocialFlow to extract value out of their existing content and to garner more visibility for their efforts among the public and the press. Intelligence drawn from SocialFlow’s Insight and Analytics Dashboard has helped Mr. Piraces identify what sorts of phrasing works best to yield clicks and Retweets. “For instance, we know that quotes tend to perform better than anything else,” he said. Further, the minimal effort involved in branching off new accounts also allows for a vital “proving ground” for new initiatives and brand extensions, such as accounts in French and Spanish.

The Results
Using SocialFlow to dispatch news and eyewitness accounts from the ground during uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, Egypt and Libya, Human Rights Watch saw their number of clicks grow 500% over between September of 2010 and February of 2011. Further, “It was very low effort,” Mr. Piraces said of setting up content feeds into SocialFlow. “We didn’t have to hire a social media manager.” Though he values the volume of followers and traffic that using SocialFlow has yielded, Mr. Piraces has a very specific target in mind when using Twitter. “[SocialFlow] helps us to get our message in front of people who can influence media.”

Download (PDF, 783.45KB)

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.

Centrality of Hashtags

If we dive into the center of this graph, we note the dominant hashtags associated with all candidates – #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter), #gop, #teaparty, #fitn (First in the Nation – the New Hampshire primary), #IowaDebate, and so on. Their positioning in the graph represents how strongly associated they are in relation to each candidate. #teaparty is the largest, most central hashtag, evenly used in association with all candidates, while #tlot (Top Libertarians on Twitter) is situated closest to Ron Paul, being used over 3,500 times in association with Ron Paul, more than 7 times the number of times it was used with others such as Gingrich, Perry and Romney. #tlot is still a central hashtag in relation to the Republican primaries, though much more reflective of the conversation around Ron Paul, hence located closer to that candidate on the network graph.

zoomed-in view of the central hashtags used in conversations referencing GOP candidates

Next, we can focus on the hashtag ecosystem surrounding each GOP candidate separately. By keeping the same graph structure but highlighting the neighborhoods of each candidate, we clearly see which hashtags are more strongly linked to each candidate. For example, in the middle graph below, all purple colored nodes represent the hashtags used in association with Mitt Romney. As we’d expect, the central hashtags all light up, as they were used multiple times in reference with the candidate.

above: Candidate Specific Hashtag Full Graphs

More interestingly, less central hashtags highlight unique aspects of each candidate, teaching us about the tone and topic of conversation. For example, in light of Romney claiming he is not a career politician, the DNC release the following youtube video. The buzz and reactions to this video are reflected in the #YoungerThanMittsPoliticalCareer hashtag (middle graph below). Hashtags like #immigracin, #primarias and #republicanas are highly correlated with Newt Gingrich, highlighting a Spanish speaking population referencing Gingrich on issues of immigration around the Republican primaries (right-most graph below).

above: Highly Correlated Hashtags for Referenced Candidates (zoomed-in)

Finally, it is interesting to compare the hashtag ecosystem ranging between two topics. In the example below, we compare hashtags used in reference with Romney versus those used with Gingrich. By eliminating the dominant central topics (#teaparty, #gop, …) we can now see the lay of the land – how the conversation differs between the candidates, and where it is similar.

Romney-Gingrich Hashtag Cloud

The hashtag #obama appears closer to Mitt Romney in the tagcloud, representing the stronger correlation between the appearance of those two terms – more people are referencing Romney with Obama (in comparison to Gingrich and Obama). Other noticeable correlations:

Mitt Romney: #gayrights, #lgbt, #jesus, #flipflop, #jobs, #economy

Newt Gingrich: #palestine, #OWS, #immigration, #abortion

Equally for Both: #republican, #dems, #economics, #amnesty

Hashtags offer us plenty of insight when trying to understand the public perception of any topic or event. Identifying abnormally spiking relationships in realtime help us cover the turn of events as they evolve, while keeping tabs on what is important for the general public. Relationships between hashtags used when referencing candidates give us important insight, while comparative language use helps us understand the differences between the conversations. Tracking these dynamics over time may unlock insight about candidates that would be hard to attain otherwise.

Now all this is *just* hashtags. Imagine how much we can learn across ALL topics! Questions? Thoughts? Feel free to comment below or ping me on Twitter: @gilgul

The Class

We used the tweepy python library to access the Twitter API. First thing we did was grab a number of Betaworks Twitter lists that different users created. Once we got a hold of this list of Twitter users who are associated with Betaworks, we pinged the Twitter API again to grab their relationships – who follows who. Once we had all this data, we used the python networkx library to build a network graph that reflects people’s relationships, where a node represents a Betaworks Twitter user, and a directed edge represents who follows who (an edge from node A to B = A follows B on Twitter).

Lastly we exported this graph into .graphml format which we then imported into the open source network visualization software – gephi. Using gephi each person personalized the design of their graph – colors, sizes and layout.

While the Betaworks network is pretty densely clustered (as expected – many Betaworkers follow other Betaworkers), different parameters reveal some interesting insight.

The Outcome

Eigenvector Centrality is a measure for the importance of a node in a network. Nodes are scored based on the principle that connections to high-scoring nodes contribute more. Like google’s page rank algorithm, the more powerful nodes that follow you, the higher score you get. We get a pretty straightforward graph, where there’s a high correlation between size/weight and the amount of time that person’s been at Betaworks. This is what we’d expect – the longer one has been at Betaworks, the more connections that person is likely to have with other folks, especially other “central” folks – the older geezers!

Betalabs Twitter users organized by Eigenvector Centrality

Now if we look at Betweenness Centrality, we get a slightly different picture of the graph. Betweenness Centrality is the measure of a node’s centrality within a network – the number of shortest paths from all vertices to all others, that pass through this node. In effect, this measures how much of a bridge the user is within the displayed network. While @Borthwick is still as central of a bridge, it is clear that @MattLeMay is not only followed by many other colleagues (above) but also an important bridge between the different parts of the network.

Betaworks Twitter users organized by Betweenness Centrality

Class python code and instructions are available here.

Photos and people’s graphs can be seen here.

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.

The SocialFlow team hard at work in front of the new Ricky Powell installation

A site-specific installation of Ricky’s work rises high above SocialFlow desks. ”It’s really important to us, being a part of New York City as a tech startup to give a nod to history and our influencers,” said Frank Speiser, the co-founder of SocialFlow. “We put this up in the shape of graphic equalizer, because New York is the great equalizer.”

Pictured in the exhibit are luminaries of the music and film worlds such as the Beastie Boys, Laurence Fishburne, Mike Tyson, Jam Master J, Dondi White, the WuTang Clan and Public Enemy.

Click on the images below to view selects from Ricky’s SocialFlow office installation:

To see more of Ricky Powell’s work, check out his show at Milk Studios starting on December 17.

SocialFlow is a social media optimization platform that is used by major publishers, brands and retailers around the world. Our technology determines the optimal time to release the right message based on when audience is most receptive. SocialFlow sits on a plethora of realtime data streams, including both the Twitter and Bitly firehoses. Our infrastructure parses, indexes and draws insight from the combined streams in realtime.

The SocialFlow research team splits its time between:

1) Data Science – prediction, classification, natural language processing, dataviz, … and any other goodies one can use to analyze data. We spend a lot of time hacking with the numpy and scipy python libraries, and utilize datastores such as cassandra, redis and HDFS.

2) Research / Storytelling – we are known for our in-depth analyses of events and dynamics, using our data sources to tell interesting stories. some recent examples: Breaking Bin-Laden: visualizing the power of a single tweet, audience analysis of prominent MSM news accounts and “Occupying” Twitter Tending Topics is harder than it looks. We’re committed to publishing both on our blog and in academic journals (published at ICWSM 2010).

We’re looking for passionate people who are interested in making sense of data, the dynamics of information sharing, and furthering the understanding of the critical shift in our media ecosystem. This is a paid internship. Times and length are flexible.

To apply: (deadline - Jan 8th, 2012 midnight EDT)
Send an email to research -at- socialflow -dot- com with the subject “SocialFlow Research Summer Intern Application” that includes the following:
1. A brief description of your dissertation or master’s project
2. An article that you have written (blog or journal) or a piece of code you’ve used to analyze data (code or github repo)
3. A copy of your CV
4. Links to your website or other online presence
5. A short description of 1-3 projects that you might imagine doing as an intern at SocialFlow

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”?

Earlier in the month, SocialFlow VP of Research and Development Gilad Lotan spoke at #brandsconf about data and how using what you know about your audience can help you connect better. Find out the answers to the above questions and much more by watching the video.

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

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.

View the article here.