Below, check out highlights of our panel at Digitas “What’s Your Secret Weapon in Social?”

This panel featured Digiday’s Brian Morrissey,  Digitas’ Jordan Bitterman, Pepsico’s George Smith Jr. and our own Michael Chin.

See the whole video here.

Literature Unbound: Radical Strategies for Social Literature, with SocialFlow's Amanda McCormick far left

Our own Gilad Lotan at "More than 'Likes' Can Say

Selected Tweets about our events:

We saw again this week how essential networks like Twitter and Facebook were in disseminating the news of beloved pop singer Whitney Houston’s death. But the question of who “broke” the news and caused it to ignite across social media is an interesting one, and one we delve into the in the visualizations below.

News about Whitney Houston’s death appeared on Twitter some 42 minutes before it hit the press. While that fact is true, and a number of Twitter users had indeed found out about Whitney Houston’s tragic death before press announced it, the story did not actually break until the AP and TMZ posted their announcement. Why didn’t the news spread from the people who first knew about it? Surely such a hot piece of information would easily spread like wildfire.

Yet that didn’t happen, and in the following blog post we try to understand why. In this case, what we see is what happens when a user gains access to a highly potent piece of information, while not being situated within the right kind of network that enables the content to spread in time. Contrast this effect with Keith Urbahn’s Tweet about Osama Bin Laden’s death. In this case, even though media outlets were not first to publish the news, they played a critical role in spreading it. The information was in the network, yet nobody listened until the press came in. Why?

Here’s what happened

On the evening of Feb 11th, at 7:15 PM EDT, @AjaDiorNavy (Aja Dior M.) posted the following Tweet:

omgg , my aunt tiffany who work for whitney houston just found whitney houston dead in the tub . such ashame & sad

— Aja Dior M. (@AjaDiorNavy) February 12, 2012

Within less than an hour, thousands of  Twitter users were lamenting the loss of the legendary singer, along with all major media entities. The following day, Mashable claimed that Twitter broke the news many minutes before the press. But was that really the case? The AP published the news at 7:57 PM, 42 minutes after @AjaDiorNavy’s original tweet. Yet during this period only 16 people found out and tweeted about Whitney Houston’s death (coming from two separate sources). Only after the AP had posted the information, did it actually start spreading across the network.

The First

The first tweet by @AjaDiorNavy, is part of a siloed network of friends. The graph below is a zoomed-in view of the first Twitter users who found out about Whitney Houston’s death. Each node represents a user who responded to the news, and the connections represent the path information flowed. The brighter-colored orange nodes published their response before the darker reds.

First reports of Whitney Houston's death on Twitter

The users represented in the graph above were responding to information posted by @AjaDiorNavy, but only within their little siloed group. The information did not catch on and spread to other parts of the network.

The Second

The second information source came 19 minutes afterwards, in a tweet by Jasmine Moore (@OmgSoJas) whose aunt was supposed to do Whitney Houston’s hair (perhaps the same aunt?). In this case, the graph seems denser as there are many more connections between users. However, only three took place before the big media (Orange nodes) accounts came on board. The majority of users in this cluster responded at a much later stage (red colored nodes) after the news had already spread.

Second Information Source announcing Whitney Houston's Death

The Press 

At 7:57 PM EDT, the AP posted the news to its Twitter account. Up until then, 42 minutes had passed since the first published reference, and only 16 users had responded. Within 5 minutes of the AP’s post, we see over 3,000 responses, with an increasing acceleration in number of reactions. Within minutes, TMZ, Eonline and a number of media & entertainment press accounts confirmed the news. And it spreads like wildfire.

the AP reports the news

What We Learn

Just because you’re first doesn’t mean your content will spread. In this case, @AjaDiorNavy had an incredibly hot piece of information many minutes before anyone else knew, yet @AjaDiorNavy didn’t have the right network to spread it.

We’ve seen this many times before, the combination of the right timing, network and topicality make or break an information cascade. @AjaDiorNavy had a topically relevant piece of content, at the right time, yet lacked the network that could spread it in time. In this case, Twitter indeed broke the news, but not the way reports claimed earlier this week. The information was fed to the network, but nobody listened until the press came in.

Download the full-sized visualization

Questions, Thoughts or Comments? Ping me on Twitter – @gilgul

Missed our panel yesterday at Digitas for Social Media Week? You’re in luck — we taped it! Above in four parts is a playlist of the entire panel, featuring Digiday’s Brian Morrissey,  Digitas’ Jordan Bitterman, Pepsico’s George Smith Jr. and our own Michael Chin. 

We think you’ll find it informative and illuminating. And even though our contest is over, we’d love to hear what you think — please leave us a comment below or tweet @SocialFlow with the hashtag #socialweapon.

Many thanks to all of the panelists and our friends at Digitas!

#SocialWeapon

Thanks to all who participated in the SocialFlow social weapon contest this month! Our winner is Matt Philbin:

“I create social media campaigns for musicians and bands. My secret weapon combines traditional social media channels (ie, Facebook, Twitter) with e-commerce. My latest project is a contest on Facebook for fans of a band to submit t-shirt designs adapted from the group’s latest CD. The band will select the winning design. The winner receives a prize package and the t-shirt they designed will be made available on Threadless.com for the runner’s up to purchase a at discount.”

Congratulations again Matt, and thank you to the rest of the participants for sharing your tips, tricks, and social media secrets with us.

We won’t be greedy and hog all the secrets. Here are some of the entries that caught our attention:

Alexandra Blickley: (@Apbickley) “Flexibility: Start with quality content. Listen & respond to followers. Learn. Alter content strategy. Repeat.”

Kenny Jahng: “My #SocialWeapon is to pre-compose samples tweets others can simply cut/paste or even just click to tweet when asking others to share some good news.”

Dave Copeland: (@CopeWrites) ”Always include one @ mention so at least one other person reads (and possibly shares) your tweets #socialweapon.”

DR. G: (@ZAGrrl): “My #socialweapon? Playing in the sweet spot at the intersect of high tech. & high touch. @socialflow http://bit.ly/zJq5Z9.”

Jen Charlton: (@Jen_Charlton): ”Love searching hashtags. And creating interest graphs based on demographics/keywords is definitely a #socialweapon!”

Judi Huck: “Knowing what’s hot – trends are more likely *to trend*”

Garry Polmatter: “My secret weapon – video responses to Tweets, and gratuitous use of the word “Awesome”.”

Erik Schwenke: “I do automotive social media marketing. How do you get people to care about a car dealership? Get involved in their lives proactively. I search for Twitter conversations every day, talk as a person (rather than a faceless brand), and look for opportunities where I can get involved with the community, such as helping to sponsor a local blogger to attend a social media conference.”

For more tips check out our one-on-one interviews with such professionals as:

Joanna Firneno: Communications Manager at DEEP FOCUS
Meghan Peters: Community Manager at Mashable
DJ ONIONZ
Kate Gardiner: Owner, Distill Media
Jennifer MacDonald: Director of Community and Client Engagement at Engage121
Ricky Powell: Celebrated photographer

As part of this initiative, we asked YOU what your secret weapon is. There is still 1 more day left to get involved in the social weapon contest, so enter for your chance to win a Kindle Fire now!

For inspiration, take a look at what some of the experts told us:

Joanna Firneno: Communications Manager at DEEP FOCUS

Meghan Peters: Community Manager at Mashable

DJ ONIONZ

Kate Gardiner: Owner, Distill Media

Jennifer MacDonald: Director of Community and Client Engagement at Engage121

Ricky Powell, celebrated photographer

Thanks for your secrets, experts!

If you do take part in Social Media Week or the luncheon, be sure to come say hi to us.

Here’s a breakdown of where you’ll find us, February 13-17, 2012. Come and find us if you can — there will be giveaways!

Monday, February 13th: 

SF Music Tech Summit: Come meet SocialFlow’s Chris Acosta and talk about social media and the music industry. 

Tuesday, February 14th: 

SMWNYC: Literature Unbound: Radical Strategies for Social Literature: SocialFlow’s Amanda McCormick co-organized this panel on “social reading” with marketing consultant (and SocialFlow client) Susan Halligan.

SMWNYC: More Than “Likes” Can Say: See our research chief Gilad Lotan join other experts to discuss the intersection of search and social at the Microsoft offices in NYC.

Wednesday, February 15th

SMWNYC at Digitas — What’s Your Secret Weapon in Social: A Panel and Luncheon Discussion: In this panel and luncheon co-curated by SocialFlow, learn about the “secret weapons” of some of the top social media practitioners in the field.

DC Tech Meetup #11: Social Media Week Edition: SocialFlow’s Michael Chin will be on hand at this Meetup to demo the new version of SocialFlow, answer questions and offer discounts!

Thursday, February 16th

FoundersCard Signature Event: SF: Several members of the SocialFlow team will be in San Francisco for this FoundersCard event.

Friday, February 17th

SMWDC: Election 2012 and the Fight for the Internet, hosted by The Washington Post: We expect this panel, which features our own Gilad Lotan, to be an exciting discussion of how social will play an unprecedented role in the upcoming election.

How you can get involved: 

• Come and say “hi” to a member of the SocialFlow team at one of the events above.
• Share your “secret weapon in social media” for a chance to win! Here’s how.
• Follow @socialflow and tweet #iwantsocialflow. We’ll DM you a special offer.

Hope to see you this week!

As you might know if you’ve been checking in with us regularly, the SocialFlow team has been working hard over the past year and a half to bring powerful publishing optimization technology to the likes of  the Economist, Buzzfeed, the New York Public Library, Pepsi and Human Rights Watch. The feedback — and stunning growth — of our beta clients has been invaluable in building the Optimized Publisher™ that you can try today.

Our research and development team has also been busy studying the social networks at scale and delivering research studies that have made headlines around the world on everything from the Tweet that broke the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death, to the way earthquakes make seismic ripples on the social web to the differing characteristics of engaged audiences of news organizations.

It’s all about understanding audiences and language — and the way they intersect and can have powerful predictive value for those who want to make major impact on Twitter and Facebook.

For the very first time, the Optimized Publisher™ gives you real-time insight into both language and audience, plus the power to score your content, see its value before you publish it, and leverage the right opportunities to publish when you are most likely to get clicks, shares, Retweets, mentions and follower growth.

SocialFlow’s Optimized Publisher™ uses the power of predictive analytics and technology to remove the time-consuming guesswork from social media strategies. Now brand managers and publishers can use their time to focus on creating the unique and engaging content their audiences require.

As the business value of social media has increased, so has the urgency to create intelligent tools that can respond to split-second shifts and growing audiences. Today,  for the first time, with the Optimized Publisher™, you can do just that.

Read on for more about key features, click here to sign up, or download the press release.

Related: TechCrunch: SocialFlow Opens the Floodgates

Real-time Analytics
Enjoy comprehensive analytics and reporting across networks and content sources. Quickly gauge your performance on Facebook and Twitter overall, or drill down by by action (likes, comments, Retweets, etc) or content sources.

 

Single Message Reporting
Detailed stats are now individualized for every message you send.

 

Resonance Predictor
Real-time resonance predictor. Type in your message and see in an instant how well it is likely to perform.

 

Google Analytics
Dock in Google Analytics and optimize against your goals.

 

Custom Reporting
View the performances of your content, number of clicks, interactions, audience activity and much more in a streamlined, dynamic dashboard.

 

Custom Content Streams
You can now see your queue and live stream all in one place. Add additional columns to track keywords as needed.

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