A quick Taghive tabulation of tags used by SXSWers at yesterday's panels:
And here are SXSW hashtags for the last hour.
The biggest trending topic for day 1 of SXSW was "Battle decks" with 146 tweets by 37 people. "iPad" had 47 tweets by 37 people. (Leading tag cloud as of 7pm last night is below. For a sense of scale, the smallest on the graphic is "stuffwedesignfor" with 47 tweets by 9 people.)
After a tremendous coding push by Martin, Zsolt and Kristof over the last week, Taghive was functioning like a mind machete, clearing a path through the raucous jungle SXSW. Working late last night, Martin added "last day" and "last week" to the original "last hour" slice.
As I'd hoped, Taghive helped turn the firehose into a water fountain, organizing insights flooding out of various panels, spread between the Hilton and the convention center, into readable channels. Clicking from tag to tag during the day, I got a running summary of each panel. The tag cloud, with its swelling and contracting words, also signaled when a panel was suddenly heating up.
As @dhatfield tweeted earlier this week, "To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time."
http://weblog.blogads.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Day-1-leading-topic-battle-decks-smaller.jpg
Let's see what day 2 brings.
Great HBR article on slicings and dicings and visualizations of Twitter's volcanic spew of content and data.
Needs some mention of Twiangulate tweep maps. :) For starters, here's a map of the connections among @Harvardbiz's 100 biggest twitter followers.
We've enabled search for Twitter bios. This should be useful for journalists and researchers trying to dig out new sources or to quantify the importance of a particular type of personality on Twitter. I've done some quick digging and turned up a bunch of fun factlets and trendoids.
Journalists and Twitter
For example, if you're an analyst trying to get a grip on which newspapers are making the biggest inroads on Twitter, you might be interested to note that the search for "New York Times" (x "author" and "bestseller) turns up 421 tweeps, while the same search for the Washington Post turns up only 247 tweeps. The same search for Wall Street Journal turns up 202 tweeps.
It's interesting to note that WSJ's top 50 tweeps are almost all "house" accounts -- for example "WSJ Health" and "WSJ Real Estate" -- rather than individual journalists.
Does this reflect a relative lack of name-brand journalists at WSJ versus NYT and WAPO, or, more likely, a WSJ corporate policy against professional tweeting? (And if the latter, is Rupert Murdoch seeking to keep his journalists from building cachet that would give them more leverage in haggling over salary?)
Causes and Twitter
What does it mean that 724 tweeps include NRA in their Twitter bios, while just 67 tweeps self-identify as Sierra Club members.
There are 6,240 "liberal" tweeps , 11,259 "conservative" tweeps, 4,234 "progressive" tweeps. 1,269 mention TCOT.
Cities
45,120 tweeps mention Boston while 33,666 mention Dallas. (Relative to population, Dallas should have roughly twice as many tweeps as Boston.)
Health
6,751 tweeps mention cancer in their bios, 1,155 mention diabetes
Sports
Fully 2,007 tweeps mention the Red Sox, overshadowed by the 3,110 tweeps mentioningYankee. 425 tweeps are Tarheels, 1,126 mention Harvard and 709 mention Yale.
Speaking of sports, 10,272 tweeps are runners, 8,167 tweeps mention tennis and 17,594 mention golf.
You can now map of Twitter Lists with Twiangulate.
For example, here's a map of Jeff Jarvis' Media Wonks list. The full list of 192 tweeps doesn't map well -- this is an <strike>incestuous</strike> highly networked world. So the map defaults to display only those tweeps with bilateral links (as opposed to a one directional follow) with more than 10% of the people on the list.
It's interesting to note that Jay Rosen, of NYC, is mutual friends with 88% of the people on the list. There's lots of other good data to mine here -- we'll be getting to that soon.
To build a map, look for "Build a map" in the navigation cluster at the top of the page. To view maps other people have built go to "Group maps."
Looking at efficient networks, Wired reports: "Tree branches have inspired efficient transit networks, but a new study
finds inspiration in leaves. The curvy, connected leaf veins found in
some plants are an efficient way to circumvent damaged areas and
channel nutrients, report researchers led by Eleni Katifori of the
Rockefeller University in New York City."
Need to map an ad hoc list of tweeps attending a map or conference? This is your tool! Just give the map a name, add some tweeps, then share new maps the URL.
Examples:
a) map of some tweeps attending the SUXORZ panel during SMWNYC in February 2010.
b) map of some tweeps attending the AnalyticsCamp at Chapel Hill, February 6, 2010.
The Watch List will notify you when two or three tweeps you've targeted jointly follow someone new.
Good for finding rising stars in an industry, a competitor's new customer, or a new hire in a company.
We DM you personal updates weekly after your target tweeps follow someone new.
To create a watch list, click "create a watch" at the top of the table after you've Twiangulated "common friends." To edit past Watches, click the "Watch List" link top right on most pages.
Want to know who matters to someone?
It's usually not the biggest tweeps someone follows -- heck almost everyone follows @BarackObama, @PerezHilton and @Mashable.
It's the smallest, the tweeps with just 36 or 281 followers.
In the "under the radar" list, you more likely find a tweeter's lawyer, sister, high school BFF, 40-something-mentor-just-getting-on-twitter, and/or cubicle-mate.
Mapping those people often yields the most meaningful insights into a tweeter's social graph.