On Aug 12, Pear Analytics released a white paper discussing exactly what people are tweeting about.  For two weeks they randomly sampled the public timeline in 30 minute increments between the hours of 11 am and 5 pm CST. They categorized the tweets into six categories:

• News: What is happening in the world news, not TechCruch/Mashable type of news
• Spam: We all know what this one is.
• Self-Promotion: Corporate posts, latest blog posts – you get the idea
• Pointless Babble: Apparently these are the “I am eating a sandwich” or “I am going to the mall” type of tweets
• Conversational: @reply posts or questions and polls
• Pass Along Value: Retweets

Because I usually get a lot out of my tweets (sharing knowledge, conversation), I was surprised to see that Pointless Babble came in with 40.55% of the captured tweets, but Conversational came in close at 37.55%, and Pass-Along Value was third at 8.7% of the tweets captured. Also surprising was that Self-Promotion came in at 5.85%, Spam at 3.75% and News at 3.6%.

Today I tweeted out a link to a NY Times article on online learning stats. Where do “Sharing” tweets come in, where people are exchanging knowledge? Is that News?

The results went a little further, noting that 11:30 am and Mondays have a large retweet value. Maybe people are sharing all sorts of things they are finding in the news as they return to their desk and sharing them on Twitter, inspiring retweets? Conversational tweets tend to happen between 2 and 4 pm. This is about when I get antsy and want to focus on something else.  However, keep in mind that these tweets were all randomly sampled from the public timeline and Pear Analytics functions on CST. 11:30 am for them is different in for a lot of the rest of us.

In their white paper, Pear Analytics drew the conclusion that Conversational and Babble were so close that had they conducted a longer study, the two categories would constantly be trading out for first place. My money is on Conversational.

Oh, and guess where I found out about this study? Someone tweeted it.

__

Cheers!

Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

words and pictures by Brian Solis

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas

The Conversation Prism debuted in August 2008 to provide a visual representation of the true expansiveness of the Social Web and the conversations that define it. In this short time span, over one million people have crossed its path.

When Jesse Thomas of JESS3 and I initially mapped “the conversation,” we recognized that the act of categorizing social networks within a visually rich graphic would be momentary at best, demanding endless iterations in order to accurately document evolving and shifting online conversations as well as the communities that promote them.

My goal was to observe, analyze, dissect, and present the dynamics of conversations, how and where they transpired.

We’re proud to introduce version 2.0 of The Conversation Prism. We’re also excited to release a version that traverses the online realm into the real world with the release of a full color 18” x 24” poster to prominently display in the workplace, classroom, home office, or at events. Please visit www.theconversationprism.com for details, embed codes, and additional insights.

Please read the full post at PR 2.0.

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by Brian Solis

At SXSW this year, I am privileged to host a book signing for my brand new book written with the wonderful Deirdre Breakenridge, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR.”

The book will be available for sale on site or feel free to bring your copy.

Hosted by Barnes and Noble and located on the Trade Show + Exhibition floor, the South by Bookstore is where registrants will find books, CDs and DVDs by their favorite SXSW participants. Book signings by industry notables are scheduled during Trade Show hours as well as artist meet and greets.

Looking forward to seeing you!

RSVP:

Upcoming.org

Facebook

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words and pictures by Brian Solis, via PR 2.0

Twitter continues to inspire creativity and innovation among third-party developers. The latest useful solution is Twibs, a directory of businesses using Twitter to communicate with consumers, peers, and tastemakers.

Twitter is a conversation platform and it continues to fundamentally transform how people communicate with each other. Along with other socialized channels of online interaction, Twitter has also re-ignited the long-forgotten art of listening to and communicating with customers.

What started with forums and online reviews, then evolved to include blog comments, groups, social networks, and now micro communities, businesses are once again embracing the methodologies associated with excellent customer service – after all, the customer is always right. And, the customer is now potentially more influential than ever before.

Twibs is currently tracking roughly 4,500 brands on Twitter as well as associated promotions that they’re running within the popular micro community.

According to the founders, “Twibs was created by a small group of people with one purpose: Give twitter users a place to find businesses on twitter. We are big believers in the power of twitter to connect customers with businesses. We’re working on making it easy for consumers to find businesses, both local and national.”

Ways you can help:

- Add a new business
- Manage your own

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by Brian Solis, originally published at PR 2.0

To bypass the background story and skip straight to the instructions for Twitter Bowl, click here.

In 2008, Jeremiah Owyang had a great idea to extend the conversation about Super Bowl ads from my living onto Twitter. Chris Heuer, Stephanie Agresta, Darryl Siry, Ben Metcalfe, Eric Gonzales, and I quickly supported the idea and set up a series of Twitter stations to kick things off. Josh Bernoff of Forrester analyzed 2,500 tweets and organized the results into an impressive ratings summary. That was the beginning of #superbowlads on Twitter.

This year, we will continue the tradition of rating the Super Bowl ads on Twitter, but with a small twist – one that hopefully makes Josh Bernoff’s life a little bit easier. Unfortunately Jeremiah and Shirley are returning from Hawaii, so I had a different idea to get us back into the game, while contributing and showcasing the results in real time.

This year, we’ve also rallied the support of Louis Gray, Guy Kawasaki, and Jesse Stay, founder of SocialToo. Since Twitter is rooted in public interaction and provides the ability to extend its functionality, I wanted to find a Twitter application that would allow us to not only monitor discussions and ratings related to #superbowlads, but also provide the ability to capture and present votes.

SocialToo is a suite of productivity solutions for Twitter and other social networks. It’s most notable and unique feature is SocialSurverys, providing the ability to create elegant polls that can be shared across multiple networks (provides for automatic distribution through Twitter) and tracked in one central location for analysis.

Introducing the Second Annual Twitter Bowl…

Your hosts:

Jeremiah Owyang – @jowyang
Chris Heuer – @chrisheuer
Louis Gray – @louisgray
Jesse Stay – @jesse
Guy Kawasaki – @guykawasaki
Yours Truly – @briansolis

How to Play:

- If you don’t already have a Twitter account, join here.

- Vote for your favorite ads here and share the following link with everyone you know (do so often): http://poprl.com/FmN

- Discuss and rate each of the Superbowl ads on Twitter. Be sure to add “#superbowlads” to your Tweet.

That’s it!

Enjoy the game and follow the conversation. We’ll publish the final stats and compare the how Twitter compares to mainstream polls.

Don’t forget, share this link! http://poprl.com/FmN

For more on the subject, please read:

Louis Gray

Jeremiah Owyang

SocialToo Blog

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By Adam Jackson

This is an unedited excerpt from my upcoming book project that is still unnamed. You can follow the book’s progress at 140 characters.com.

Choosing your username is very important depending on what you plan on doing in the twitterspehere. Individuals who frequent social networks and have many logins or have built up their own brand on Twitter, will go with a name that they use on every other network. I use AdamJackson on every network as the default username. Other users have aliases that they use everywhere. Where things get complicated is when you are going to use Twitter for business and then choosing a name becomes a little challenging.

There are some factors when choosing a Twitter username that you need to keep in mind. One of those is the length of the name. The name needs to be as short as possible for a couple of reasons. First, if someone wants to reply to a tweet, having a long name will mean that their reply of 140 characters will be affected because your username “@my-really-complicated-name” just consumed a great portion of the typing space. A short name like “@dom” or “@t” means there is more room for the person to write their reply.  The second issue with having a long or complicated username is the issue of spelling your name when they are interested in viewing your twitter replace or manually typing your name into their cell phone when trying to reply. Avoid using a lot of hyphens, uncommon spellings and of course keeping the length down.  There have been situations when I wanted to direct message someone via my mobile phone and typing in “@ipwn_mst$r” into my phone is just too time consuming so I’m less likely to send that person a reply.

This book won’t help you decide what username to pick but I can offer some basic suggestions when it comes to picking a username when joining a social network. Generally, your first and last name will do as a username. If your name is John Smith then your name might already be taken but uncommon names usually aren’t used. Why not use an alias? It’s fine to use an alias or nickname but “applepimp101” takes away some intimacy and you’re hiding behind a mask. I always encourage people to use their real names and here’s another reason. Google Page Rank is something everyone is fighting for and Twitter can really help. By Twittering as AdamJackson for the past year, a search for my name will result in links to my Twitter page above other people by the same name. When I apply for a job, it’s not “applepimp101” applying for that job and I want employers to find my Twitter account because they can see the real me. If you’re Twittering about things that should remain secret then by all means choose a name that keeps your identity secret but if it’s just day to day things about you then using your real name is the most widely adopted way to become a part of social networking. Of note, you can change your Twitter name anytime via settings so don’t stress too much on the name choosing session.

If this Twitter presence will be an extension of your business then it’s a little more complicated. Will you be tweeting as the business for the purpose of interacting with customers or will be you tweeting as an employee of this company and mixing personal & professional thoughts onto Twitter? If the boss has asked you to join Twitter for the sake of interacting with customers and increasing brand recognition then create a Twitter account that matches the company name. Try to keep it small. Of course, it’s in your best interest to not Twitter too many personal thoughts when Tweeting as your company. We’ll go into this a little later because this has gotten some employees in trouble. If you’ll be Tweeting day to day things and mixing in company tweets then join as yourself and mention that you work for this company in your bio on Twitter.

Carefully choose your name because there are a few factors involved. Short, simple and relevant names garner the most attention from other Twitter users.

You can find more about 140 Characters on my website, via Twitter and my personal Twitter account.

by Brian Solis, sourced from PR 2.0

Ev Williams, Biz Stone and team have created something so significant, that it’s changing how millions of people communicate with each other – and it’s only growing beyond imagination.

Twitter boasts a substantial community that is emphatically hyperactive, evangelical, and religiously loyal – all in productive and positive ways. The first two legitimate competitors, Jaiku, acquired by Google, and Pownce, a company co-founded by Digg’s Kevin Rose, ultimately learned that Twitter’s momentum was untouchable. Jaiku is migrating to an open source model to allow developers to roll-their-own microblogging services and deploy them on the Google App Engine. Pownce was acquired by Six Apart and shuttered, in its current form, for the time being.

In just a couple of years, Twitter has soared to new heights reaching 4.5 million visitors – that’s a 752.9% increase in just one year.

At its current volume of traffic, Twitter recently surpassed Digg according to Hitwise.

Twitter not only represents a detour in human interaction, its community is building highways, roads, cities, and a support infrastructure to power this new direction. It has created its own vibrant and flourishing ecosystem known as the Twitterverse.

From this point of view, Twitter already has created an important and promising new conversation platform.

Twitter has influenced how:

- Media connects with audiences

- Businesses listen to and respond with customers

- Communications professionals, marketers, and advertisers connect with the new world of influencers

- Journalists, bloggers, analysts, event organizers can get help and answers from the community, instantly

- Everyday people can create an in-demand personal brand to open new doors and create new destinies

- People are made aware of news and important information from all over the world

As Twitter gains in relevance and prominence, its conversation platform will ring the alarms of any business that monetizes relationships, connections, and information exchange.

Simultaneously, another company is also building a conversation platform that will force an intersection with any direct and perceived competitor and further reshape the mechanics of human interaction.

Facebook is a dominant player in the world of social networks and reports show that Facebook is now nearly twice the size of MySpace worldwide.

According to Comscore, 222 million people visited Facebook, representing a 10.8% monthly growth rate.

Facebook’s news feed combined with the new Facebook Connect infrastructure is setting the stage for a global conversation platform that may go unrivaled.

Facebook is already hosting channeled conversations sourced from Twitter, FriendFeed, and many other notable communities with an audience that is undeniably substantial, captive, and vigorous.

Recently, Facebook quietly explored the prospect of acquiring Twitter, which resulted in both companies concluding discussions without alignment.

As a conversation platform, Facebook will only gain in importance, creating a precedence that may prevail as it aggregates the ability to share, read, and respond across multiple communities, from one centralized social hub.

In the meantime, Twitter will also continue to increase its stature as both a category-defining conversation platform and also an illustrious community that will further influence the dynamics of engagement and dialog, while attracting new users en masse.

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Originally published at PR 2.0

Disclosure, I’m an adviser to PeopleBrowsr…

In early December, we released a public alpha of PeopleBrowsr, an attention-centered dashboard for managing your online relationships, brand management, and communication in Twitter and across multiple social networks – all from one place.

The public alpha is running incredibly well and thanks to everyone who contributed feedback, ideas, and recommendations, the public beta will be even more incredible.

If you’re a brand manager, communications or customer service professional, community manager, or on the product support or development team, PeopleBrowsr may very well be the most comprehensive, real time monitoring and engagement solution available today. My good friend Sukhjit, created a phenomenal video demonstrating how she tracked conversations, images, and videos related to the inauguration of President Obama on Twitter and across the Social Web – as it happened.

Hopefully this helps you…

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