Turning News Into Knowledge

As November comes and goes, so too do thoughts of Christmas lists, holiday shopping and the much-anticipated Black Friday – an annual event that regularly spawns footage of eager shoppers being trampled underfoot.

With that in mind, we at MediaMiser have undertaken that most pressing of holiday tasks: a list of the most popular toys this year in online news and on Twitter!

After a month of analysis, we’ve found that tablet computers that emphasize learning such as the LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer have dominated this year’s online conversation thus far.

But not only have kids caught tablet fever – perhaps not a surprise, considering the popularity of gadgets with most parents – but they’re also personalizing their tablets, the report shows. The words “pink”, “green”, and “case” are three of the top-mentioned words associated with the LeapPad on  Twitter.

The Leapfrog LeapPad Explorer.

And though all toys in MediaMiser’s top five have some kind of technology component, the report also shows kids will always be kids and that parents can’t go wrong with purely fun toys such as interactive robots and radio-controlled fish.

MediaMiser’s 2011 Hot Toys in Media report – based on the Toys”R”Us® Fabulous 15, billed as “the 15 best toys of the season” – has used MediaMiser patented software to monitor mentions of the retailer’s list of must-have playthings since late October, along with overall mentions of the “#toys” hashtag. The report has monitored both online news sites and Twitter.

We’ll release bi-weekly updates of activity on Twitter and in online news regarding the Fabulous 15, with a full report due just before Christmas.

The most popular Fabulous 15 toys on Twitter, as of 10 p.m. on Nov. 21, were:

1)       LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer Learning Tablet: Tablet computer for kids ($99.99) (4276 mentions)

2)       Air Swimmers: radio-controlled toy fish ($19.99 – $39.99) (1749 mentions)

3)       Fijit Friends: Interactive, robotic toys ($7.99-$47.99) (1369 mentions)

4)       My Keepon: Interactive dancing robot ($34.99) (1026 mentions)

5)       Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure Start Pack for Wii ($49.99) (984 mentions)

The five most Tweeted-about toys of the Toys"R"Us Fabulous 15, including the LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer.

Total Twitter mentions of any of the Fabulous 15 or #toys hashtag.

Online news coverage trends of the top five since late October.

As you may know by now, this year’s MediaMiser Turning News Into Knowledge Award required Algonquin College PR students to promote the hashtag #workinPR on Twitter. And though Chels Murray brought home the hardware this year after taking some great initiative, a number of students showed impressive skills on the platform during the campaign.

Being a traditional and social media analysis company, we thought we’d share some of the activity #workinPR generated – and is still generating – since its inception in early October.

Here’s some brief stats and graphs on #workinPR from Oct. 12 until this week. Enjoy!

Overall Twitter activity for #workinPR

* The two activity spikes on Oct. 27 and Nov. 3 were spurred by student-organized #workinPR tweet chats.

Top mentioned web links

MediaMiser blog: Keep an eye on #workinPR from Algonquin College PR students!  - 13 links

5 things all PR students should know about their choice of career – 8 links

Personality types geared for a career in public relations - 7 links

The PR Closet blog – 7 links

PR vs. advertising: What’s the difference? – 5 links

PR internships: 3 tips for finding the right fit – 5 links

Top handles by influence (retweet ratio)

Top handles by followers

Top handles by number of postings

Last night’s Girl Geek Dinner Ottawa  featured one of the  passionate founders of Girl Develop It Ottawa, Serena Ngai.

After ordering our dinners at The Black Tomato, Serena’s presentation got underway. Her goal in launching the Ottawa chapter of Girl Develop It was to increase the number of women in technology-related careers, and she hopes strong female role models will inspire girls to feel more comfortable pursuing this career path.

At one point in her presentation, Serena asked us to name six women in prominent technology roles.  Even as a group we couldn’t come up with six.

This is exactly why Girl Develop It Ottawa exists.

Serena also highlighted the ever-widening gender gap in technology-related careers, presenting the problem as three-pronged:

• Diversity – women may be uncomfortable being outspoken in a male-dominated environment;
• Advancement – women who have not studied technological fields at a post-secondary institution may feel it would take too much time and effort to learn now;
• Role models – without them, women don’t have anyone to look to for inspiration

The above illustrates the widening gap between U.S. women and their male counterparts in tech-related fields.

Girl Develop It Ottawa hopes to change this by creating a friendly, supportive environment where women can learn new tech skills. At its workshops, Girl Develop It Ottawa provides out-of-classroom instruction (with what they say is a low time commitment) to help women build their skill sets.

The next Girl Develop It workshop, Intro to HTML and CSS, is on Nov. 29 and Dec. 6, from 6:30 – 9:30 p.m., and Serena says she’s also looking for volunteers to help run workshops and share technological skills with Ottawa women.

As the evening wound down, Girl Geek Dinner Ottawa thanked its sponsors:  National Arts Centre, Used Ottawa, and of course, MediaMiser.

For information on the next Girl Geek Dinner, search its hashtag on Twitter… and remember tickets sell out fast!

A big congratulations goes out to Algonquin College second-year PR student Chelsea Murray (@Chels_Murray), who is the winner of the fifth annual Turning News Into Knowledge Award.

This year, students were required to promote the hashtag #workinpr on Twitter, by tweeting interesting and timely information about finding a job in PR, marketing or related fields. Chelsea showed both enthusiasm and professionalism in her approach to the campaign, and also developed a weekly Twitter chat around the #workinpr hashtag.

“I’m so excited to have won, but was also happy to have been given the opportunity to participate! I had a lot of fun doing this and really gained a lot from participating. I’ve made many new contacts within the industry,” says Chelsea.

We would like to thank everyone for their participation in the Turning News Into Knowledge award. The winner was selected based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative criteria including number of followers gained during the campaign, retweet ratio, number of @ mentions, and relevant links, as well as the overall quality of information posted.

Please join us in congratulating Chelsea!

It’s not often OC Transpo makes the national media. But when it does, you can count on it being in very much a spectacular fashion.

That was certainly the case this week, when - as during 2009′s seven-week bus strike in Ottawa - the city’s transportation service made Canada-wide headlines once again. The culprit this time wasn’t picket lines, but rather a now-infamous and seriously ticked-off bus operator.

The incident, posted to YouTube Nov. 3, surfaced in public chatter over the weekend. It quickly went viral (of course), garnering more than 116,000 hits by this morning.

By Monday, both traditional media and Twitter commentators were heaping large slices of scorn onto to the organization. And by scorn, we mean it: after toning a random sampling of #OCTranspo tweets from the past few days, 54 per cent were negative and 38 per cent were neutral. Only eight per cent of tweets were positive or supportive of OC Transpo.

Worse, reports on Tuesday indicated a second OC Transpo video was making the rounds, this time showing a driver on a cell phone.

Here’s who led the conversation so far both in the traditional media and on Twitter (all data is as of 11 a.m. eastern time on Tuesday, Nov. 8), gleaned via MediaMiser’s software solution:

 Media trends

After the initial posting of the YouTube video on Nov. 3, #OCTranspo Twitter activity didn’t begin its acceleration until late on Nov. 5 and into Sunday.

The traditional media, while it did cover the story on Sunday, didn’t devote significant space to it until Monday the 7th.

Please note coverage and tweet levels shown in this chart until are only until 11 a.m. on Nov. 8.

Twitter

The top influencers by retweet ratio (the number of retweets each user garners, compared to number of original tweets) were:

1) @StefankeyesCTV (retweet ratio of 14)

2) @Ottguy (retweet ratio of 7.5)

3) @stuntmanstu (retweet ratio of 6.33)

4) @crimegarden (retweet ratio of 5)

5) @Ottawasuncom (retweet ratio of 4.83)

Four of the top five most retweeted users were either journalists, media outlets or former journalists, and six of the top seven (including @CTVNews and @globeandmail, which finished sixth and seventh, respectively).

The top tweeters by number of followers and volume were as follows:

Traditional media (print, online, television, radio)

Danielle Bell of Sun Media had at least 36 stories published on the incident in publications such as the Ottawa Sun, Sudbury Star, Owen Sound Sun Times, Niagara Falls Review and Sarnia Observer.

Ms. Bell and her colleagues at Sun Media dominated print and online coverage, with five of the top six authors from the outlet (Scott Taylor, Jon Willing, Kelly Roche and Errol McGihon).

Mr. McGihon is a photographer with Sun Media and has been attributed a byline for this study, thanks to his standalone photo that ran in a series of Sun-owned papers.

CTV and Sun Media (especially the Ottawa Sun) picked up on the story in a big way over the past couple of days, with Ottawa’s CTV Two (formerly A Channel) and CTV Ottawa leading the broadcast pack.

CBC also ran with the story, with three of the top ten publications including CBC News Network and CBC Ottawa.

Postmedia publications didn’t seem to cover the story with the intensity of other major outlets, although the Ottawa Citizen did crack the top ten.

Talk radio station CFRA finished in 11th, just out of the top ten publications.

Coverage between outlet types was mixed, with news websites and daily newspapers each picking up at least 30 per cent of coverage each.

Television held its own at just under 30 per cent, while radio garnered just a shade under nine per cent of all coverage.