Twitter metrics and measureWhy (more than how to) analyse Twitter

Dr Stephen DannSchool of Management

Marketing & International Business, Australian National University

@stephendann or stephen.dann@anu.edu.au

Why dissect a living medium?

Metrics

• What gets measured gets done

• What gets done can be measured

• What gets tweeted can be assembled into little diagrams with neat colour schemes

Why bother?

“Okay, so if we’re going to do it, can it be done well?”

“No?”“How about medium rare?”

Coding the Streams

Krishnamurthy et al (2008) •users were classified by

–follower/following counts,

•Numbers and ratios

–means and mechanisms of their engagement

•Web (61.7%), mobile/text (7.5%), software (22.4%)

–volume of use •Tweets per time period

http://www.thegreenhead.com/2008/09/slice-solutions-pie-pan-divider-creates-perfect-slices.php

Coding the Streams

Java et al 2007 1,348,543 tweets 76,177 users April 01, to May 30, 2007

Four meta-categories daily chatter conversations information / URL sharing news reporting

http://www.thegreenhead.com/2008/09/slice-solutions-pie-pan-divider-creates-perfect-slices.php

Analysis 2: The Quickening

Jansen et al (2009) • tweets with brand name • expression of brand sentiment

• 13-week period–April 4, 2008 to July 3, 2008.

•650 reporting episodes –13 x 50 brands

•149,472 tweets

Analysis 3: Oh, those guys

Pear Analytics (2009)• 2000 tweets• 11am to 5pm• 10 working days

Six part classification• news (3.6%), • spam (3.75%), • self-promotion (5.85%), • pointless babble (40.55%)• conversational (37.55%)• pass-along value (8.70%).

Where’s the party @?

Honeycutt and Herring (2009)• four one-hour samples • four-hour intervals• 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, on January 11, 2008

•Sample of 200 tweets coded with grounded methodology

1) Addressivity: Directs a message to another person2) Reference: Makes reference to another person, butdoes not direct a message to him or her. 3) Emoticon: Used as part of an emoticon. 4) Email: Used as part of an email address. 5) Locational 'at': Signals where an entity is located.6) Non-locational 'at': Used to represent the preposition 'at' other than in the sense of location. 7) Other: Uses not fitting into any other category,

Categories

Naaman, Boase and Lai (2010)• Sample of 400 tweets

–more than one category was assigned to a single message.

• Sampling frame –125,593 unique user IDs –‘personal’ Twitter users–10 friends, 10 followers, 10 messages–911 users

•N = 350 users

The Categories• Information Sharing• Self Promotion• Opinions/Complaints• Statements and Random Thoughts• Me now• Question to followers• Presence Maintenance• Anecdote (me)• Anecdote (others)

Tweet, Tweet, Retweet

danah boydScott GolderGilad Lotan

Microsoft!

Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter• Process of RT

–Preservation–Shrtn–Attribution / Authorship

Rationale–Amplify–Entertain–Comment–Visible listening

• Agreement• Support• AOL/me too• Self gain• Self archive

The consistent theme

People keep using Twitter for personal use.

• Discussions of “self”• Pointless babble • Conversational

All criticisms of the use of twitter for pleasure and personal consumption

What Twitter looks like…

…and how are people using Twitter?

Twitter – www.twitter.com

‘Sup?

Recoding the Platform

Let’s do it my way

Theory and Ideology

Useful versus Enjoyable

Bohme (2006) outlines a propensity of society to classify technology of all forms into – “useful and therefore valuable” – “enjoyable, therefore irrelevant”.

Böhme, G (2006) Technical Gadgetry: Technological Development in the Aesthetic Economy, Thesis Eleven, 86 (1): 54-66

Why do it?

Twitter is not about the aggregate firehose

Twitter is how you use it.

Analysis: what (twitter history) as an indicator of how (use of the service)

Method

Grounded Theory• Broad categories based on / supported by six prior studies•Sub categories developed from theory and data• Bunch of different boxes for sorting the letters

Personal Twitter History• @stephendann

–274 Following / –355 Followers–2841 messages –Mar 13 2007 to Aug 18 2009

• Sujathan (2009) “Twitter to pdf” software.

Categories and Results

Doesn’t scale to the public sphere!Huzzah!

NO MASS GENERALISATION POSSIBLE!

Major Categories

• Conversational– Uses an @statement to address another user

• Status– An answer to “What are you doing now?”.

• Pass along– Tweets of endorsement of content

• News– Identifiable news content which is not UGC

• Phatic– Content independent connected presence

• Spam– Junk traffic, unsolicited automated posts, and other

automated tweets generated without user consent

Minor CategoriesConversational1. Query2. Referral3. Action4. Response

Status1. Personal2. Temporal3. Location4. Mechanical5. Physical6. Work7. Activity

Pass along1. RT2. UGC3. Endorsement

News1. Headlines2. Sport3. Event4. Weather

Phatic1. Greeting2. Fourth wall3. Broadcast4. Unclassifiable

Spam

Results - @stephendann

Questions

stephen@stephendann.net Or

@stephendann

Twitter! (What is it good for?)

• health community (Berger 2009)• public libraries (Cahill 2009, Cuddy 2009)• political campaigns (Cetina 2009, Henneburg et al

2009)• business (Dudley 2009; Power and Forte 2008)• journalism (Ettama 2009)• civil unrest and protests (Fahmi 2009)• social activism (Galer-Unti 2009)• live coverage of events (Gay et al 2009)• eyewitness accounts (Lariscy et al 2009)• government (Macintosh 2009)• education (Parslow 2009).

Uses and usage

• casual listening platform – Crawford 2009

• creating the illusion of physicality– Hohl 2009

• sense of connectedness and relationship– Henneburg et al 2009

• venue for conversation– Steiner 2009

ReferencesBöhme, G (2006) Technical Gadgetry: Technological Development in the Aesthetic Economy, Thesis Eleven, 86 (1): 54-

66

Cetina, K K 2009, What is a Pipe? bama and the Sociological Imagination, Theory, Culture & Society 2009 26(5): 129–140

Crawford, K (2009)'Following you: Disciplines of listening in social media',Continuum,23:4,525 — 535

Dudley, E 2009, Editorial: Lines of Communication, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 2009; 41; 131-134

Ettama, J 2009 New media and new mechanisms of public accountability, Journalism 2009; 10; 319-321

Fahmi, W S 2009, Bloggers' street movement and the right to the city. (Re)claiming Cairo's real and virtual "spaces of freedom", Environment and Urbanization 2009; 21; 89-107

Galer-Unti, R 2009, Guerilla Advocacy: Using Aggressive Marketing Techniques for Health Policy Change, Health Promotion Practice, 10; 325-327

Gay, P Plait, P, Raddick, J, Cain, F and Lakdawalla, E (2009) "Live Casting: Bringing Astronomy to the Masses in Real Time", CAP Journal, June 26-29

Henneburg, S. Scammell, M and O'Shaughnessy, N (2009) Political marketing management and theories of democracy, Marketing Theory 2009; 9; 165-188

Honeycutt, C and Herring, S C (2009) Beyond Microblogging: Conversation and Collaboration via Twitter, (2009). Proceedings of the Forty-Second Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-42). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Press. 1-10, http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~herring/honeycutt.herring.2009.pdf

Jansen, B, Zhang, M, Sobel, K and Chowdury, A (2009) Twitter power: Tweets as electronic word of mouth, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(11):2169–2188, 2009 http://ist.psu.edu/faculty_pages/jjansen/academic/jansen_twitter_electronic_word_of_mouth.pdf

Java, A, Song, X, Finin, T and Tseng, B (2007) Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities, Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop ’07 , August 12, 2007, p 56-65

ReferencesKrishnamurthy, B, Gill, P and Arlitt, M (2008) A Few Chirps About Twitter, WOSN'08, August

18, 2008, 19-24

Lariscy, R Avery, E J, Sweetser, K and Howes, P 2009 An examination of the role of online social media in journalists’ source mix, Public Relations Review 35 (2009) 314–316

Macintosh, A 2009, The emergence of digital governance, Significance, December, 176-178

Naaman, M, Boase, J and Lai, C-H (2010) Is it Really About Me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams, CSCW 2010, February 6–10

Parslow, G, 2009, Commentary: Twitter for Educational Networking, BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 255–256, 2009

Pear Analytics (2009) Twitter Study – August 2009, http://www.pearanalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Twitter-Study-August-2009.pdf

Power, R and Forte, D 2008, War & Peace in Cyberspace: Don’t twitter away your organisation’s secrets, Computer Fraud and Security, August, 18-20

Zhao, D and Rosson, M B, How and Why People Twitter: The Role that Micro-blogging Plays in Informal Communication at Work, GROUP’04, May 10–13, 2009, 243-252

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