Category Archives: Data Analysis

Timing, Network and Topicality: A Revealing Look at How Whitney Houston Death News Spread on Twitter

If someone posts an incredibly important message–that a cultural icon has passed away–in a densely active stream, will anyone listen? The answer is…it’s complicated. We saw again this week how essential networks like Twitter and Facebook were in disseminating the … Continue reading

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Hashing Out the GOP Race: Decoding Perceptions of Party Politics on Twitter

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 … Continue reading

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DIY Data: Teaching Twitter API and DataViz @Betaworks

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 … Continue reading

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[Video] How Brands Can Use Data to Command Attention: Gilad Lotan at #brandsconf

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 … Continue reading

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MIT Technology Review on 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 … Continue reading

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#OccupyWallStreet: origin and spread visualized

Last week we published an analysis on the usage of hashtags around the #OccupyWallStreet movement on Twitter, why some phrases reach Twitter’s trending topics list, while others never do. The crux of the the argument highlighted the outcomes of a … Continue reading

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Data Reveals That “Occupying” Twitter Trending Topics is Harder Than it Looks!

While the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has been gaining momentum, growing in terms of visibility, media coverage and sheer numbers of participants, it has had a difficult time “occupying” the Twitter trending topics (TTs) list. #OccupyWallStreet, the movement’s dominant … Continue reading

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All Shook Up: Mapping Earthquake News on Twitter from Virginia to Maine

The proper response to an earthquake? Run, scream, take cover?… no wait, Tweet! On Tuesday, the denizens of the East Coast had exactly this choice, and they responded by flooding the interwebz with messages: startled, mundane, humorous, informational. And it … Continue reading

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[Video] Gilad Lotan answers questions about his audience study for SocialFlow

Check out this video, where SocialFlow VP of Research and Development Gilad Lotan answers questions about using Twitter to engage audiences, as well as expanding on his study, Engaging News Hungry Audiences Tweet by Tweet: An audience analysis of prominent mainstream … Continue reading

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Engaging News Hungry Audiences Tweet by Tweet: An audience analysis of prominent mainstream media news accounts on Twitter

Back in May, when we analyzed the viral spread of news about Osama Bin Laden’s death, we were impressed by the speed and scale at which news could break on Twitter. Yet even with the increased popularity of Twitter as … Continue reading

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