Turning News Into Knowledge

Undoubtedly if you’ve been following the Olympics (or you know, not living under a rock) you’ve heard about the red mittens. The absolute must-have accessory for the 2010 Vancouver games that have been selling out across the country since they were released…

Last week, MediaMiser released a report that looked at some of the fun aspects of the pre-Olympics media coverage. One such topic was those red mittens. While it was no surprise they received a good amount of media coverage, we were shocked to learn they aren’t just being talked about in Canada, but in fact, the top-three news outlets talking about the mittens were all US-based.

While we’re working on a follow-up report (watch for its release first week of March), using our Twitter Analysis tool, I noticed that chatter about the mittens skyrocketed on Feb. 13 and again on the 16th. While the spike on the 13th likely had to do with timing – the first full day of the Olympics, everyone was wearing the mittens, etc., I set out find what triggered the second spike on the 16th…

Image from USA Today article

The top mentioned link about the mittens on Twitter that day was an article in USA Today. Yep, another major US publication. In fact, none of the top links were by Canadian mass media-the majority were (Canadian) blogs hosting mitten giveaways, actually. The USA Today article even mentions the mittens are the “gotta-have souvenir” of the games and features a photo of Vice-President Joe Biden sporting a pair.

According to the article, mitten retailer, the Bay, had originally projected selling 1-million pairs of the mittens, and now anticipates 3.4-million total.

Pretty neat, eh?

Download our preliminary Olympics Report

How the Media Sees It: A fun look at the 2010 Olympics. MediaMiser analyzes the fun side of the pre-Olympic Coverage. Download now!

 

 

Olympic fever is in full swing with the opening ceremonies happening tomorrow. Here at MediaMiser, we thought it’d be fun to analyze the media coverage leading up to the games and take a look at some of the lighter issues. Here’s a taste from the executive summary:

We spent the month of January examining the lighter side of pre-Olympic coverage. Much of the information gathered and analyzed has been assembled in this report to create a fun look at the following areas:

• “Truthiness” and the Olympics
• The Olympic red mittens
• The media’s favourite Olympic sport
• Top six “hyped” hockey teams
• Olympics in the blogosphere
• Olympic Tweets

Some of the findings were surprising. For example, Canada isn’t the country whose media wrote most about our ubiquitous red mittens. However, it should come as no shock to anyone that the Olympic sport covered most by online media was hockey.

And here’s a sample chart, showing the top-10 talked-about sports:

Download the whole report free here. Have a look and let us know what you think.

Made a list, checked it twice, and now the MediaMiser office is busy stuffing envelopes and licking stamps to get our holiday cards out the door.

In the meantime, we thought you might enjoy this Snowman Skiing game, which was part of last year’s gift to our clients. Be careful though–it’s highly addictive!

Happy Holidays from everyone at MediaMiser

LinkedIn announced a partnership with Twitter on Nov. 9  allowing LinkedIn users to Tweet status updates from LinkedIn and vice versa by including a #li or #in hashtag in updates.

The announcement spread quickly across the Twittersphere after Mashable blogged about it the same day. LinkedIn and Twitter users around the world were fast to jump in and try it out, many of whom merely announced that their updates were now posting to both Twitter and LinkedIn. In fact 23.3% of tweets from our sample in the first couple of days did just that.

After two weeks, it seems the use of #li and #in has dropped to less than 10% of the activity in the initial 2 days after the launch.

More interesting facts:

• Realtors and recruiting “tweeters” were fast to make use of the tags.  4 of the top 5 handles (@hrdadgar, @ZuluJobsIN, @linkedin_jobs and @hotcandidates) posted 31.6% of tweets using the new tags, @hrdadger posted 26.7% of all tweets alone!

• #in seemed to be the preferred tag, with #li being used in only 9.2% of LinkedIn tweets.

• Of the top 10 URLs used in these updates, 75% linked to the announcement about the LinkedIn Twitter partnership

While the partnership may have been a strategic business move for two of the top social networks, the lack of uptake by users might deem this initiative a #fail.

This is a quick look at emerging patterns on Twitter. After three-months, MediaMiser will do a full analysis on multiple news sources. Stay Tuned!

Just a quick note to let you know about our open house event happening this Thursday, Nov. 26, 2009 from 4-6 pm at our new office on Holland Avenue. We’d like to welcome you into our new office and to help us celebrate a great year of growth for the company.

Hors d’oeurves and drinks will be served. Also, we’re collecting non-perishable food items for the Ottawa Food Bank, if you’d like to bring an item.

We hope you can make it!

Full details and RSVP here…

Please take this post with a grain of salt. However, this has been a really weird week in both the world of sports and the Twittosphere.

This week, we had cases of politicians and public figures tweeting stuff they shouldn’t, which of course made it to the mainstream press, making the person who made the inappropriate tweet look foolish and requiring them to make an apology.

In the world of sports, the FIFA World Cup (Soccer/Football) is reeling from an extremely contentious goal scored by the French National team over Ireland, knocking the Irish out of the upcoming World Cup in South Africa.

So, what do these two things have in common? Well today, Thierry Henry, the French player who passed the ball with his hand (which should have negated the goal, sending Ireland to the World Cup) was reported by the Telegraph to have apologized on Twitter. You can see his apology on his Twitter page.

Now, I’m not saying it was inappropriate of Henry to say he’s sorry on Twitter. In fact, I believe this is a very good forum to do so, and many politicians and public figures may want to take note. That said, for the mainstream media reporting on Tweets of this nature, let’s be honest, it’s made for an interesting and very weird week.

Therefore, in the spirit of this very weird week, I suggest we develop a terminology for issuing apologies on Twitter.

I went to a Twitter glossary and found terminology for almost everything, except an apology. Since Twitter is now broadcasting apologies and, in many cases, is creating reasons for people (or tweeple) to apologize, we need a Twitter term for an apology.

Do you have a suggestion? Leave a comment below…

Resources:

• Nearly a third of the members of Parliament are on Twitter bandwagon (Canadian Press)
• MP tweets herself into hot water (Sun media)
• Halak agent faces Twitter backlash (CBC)
• Thierry Henry apologises for handball on Twitter (Telegraph)
• Thierry Henry’s Twitter page
• Twitter Glossary

Being the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) at MediaMiser, I’m constantly having to prioritize projects. Developing a successful application is about solving real problems and constantly being weary of cool ideas that add no value.

MediaMiser has been successful, in part because we’ve avoided features that add no value to our customers — features that are more cool than useful.

That said, six months ago we had to make a decision on whether or not to leverage Twitter content. The hard questions were asked:

• Was Twitter a flash in the pan, or is it here to stay?
• Does Twitter provide real value, or is it a forum for vacuous banter?

To figure that out, I had to experience Twitter first hand. I had to become Jane Goodall living with the apes — hence my user handle icon.

I registered myself on Twitter and decided to act like a good monkey and play nice with the locals.

What I found is that Twitter has real value and fills a void that other social media have problems addressing. Soon after, we started developing processes for collecting and analyzing twitter content in the MediaMiser platform.

What communication problem does Twitter solve?

Many refer to Twitter as a micro-blog. Twitter has a text limit of 140 characters–imposed so that Twitter could be made compatible with SMS messaging on cell phones.

That said, cell phone compatibility is not the only value of Twitter. Twitter has developed into a communications platform that addresses many different issues more efficiently than other media.

Blogging alternative

Blogs are a great way to share and broadcast information. However, maintaining a blog can be a challenge for the average person and many times people have only a little bit to say. The 140 character limitation of Twitter provides a less formal and time-consuming medium for the self-conscientious writer to update the public.

Many business professionals are turning to Twitter because it’s less time consuming than a blog. Blogs have to be well-thought out (especially for executives) and, in many cases, executives don’t have the time. Transparency, however, is important in maintaining the trust of staff and clients.

An easy to use two-way RSS feed

RSS feeds are an excellent way of providing and consuming news information. Many people use RSS feeds to keep up with techniques specific to their professional field or areas of interest. RSS feeds, however,  don’t allow for instant and two-way communications.  Twitter does.

Sharing news

Whether it’s from your website, blog,  or a news site, Twitter provides an excellent forum for re-broadcasting or sharing news information.

Forum for Corporate and Consumer related issues

Twitter offers consumers a forum for elliciting product information or providing both positive and negative feedback on products or services.  Conversely, Twitter also provides companies and organizations a mechanism to respond quickly to issues and get feedback to improve their company or organization. At the same time, companies and organizations can demonstrate and project transparency to the public, which evokes trust.

Networking and facilitating business

Twitter provides a platform for people to foster relationships and businesses to promote their brand through simply having a Twitter presence. Also, as mentioned before, Twitter also allows companies and organizations to broadcast news.

Many journalists and opinion leaders are also using Twitter to cross-promote themselves. In many cases, journalists will leak information on Twitter to create a buzz or communicate live events. During the 2009 NHL entry draft, I followed Darren Dregger and received news and draft information before it was officially published on the TSN web site.

Furthermore, using the courts, a law firm attempted to prevent a British daily newspaper from reporting a question in the British Parliament. However, outrage ensued on Twitter and other social media. The publication ban was later rescinded, partly because of the outrage on Twitter and partly because of the realization that even if there was a ban, there was no way of censoring Twitter.

Final thoughts

By leveraging the Twitter information within MediaMiser, we were able to perform competitive analysis and issues management, and identify pending issues for our clients, etc…  However, most interestingly, we were also able to correlate news information and measure the viral effect of a news story. We successfully demonstrated  the viral relationship between traditional and social media by analyzing the United Breaks Guitars issue.

Will Twitter continue to be an important communications tool? Only time will tell. It’s possible it could be displaced by a newer medium that more effectively addresses the same issues as Twitter.

That said, even media that Twitter has supplanted have not disappeared, and the same will probably be said of Twitter when other new media emerge.

We’ve finally settled into our new office at 11 Holland Ave. in Ottawa. (view news release), so it’s about time we shared some photos!

First, some before and after shots… followed by a few extra shots of the new place:

Old office

New office

Old kitchen

New kitchen

Old office

Analysts

Brett

Pragya

Boardroom

e-Marketer today published a study saying that social media measurement lags adoption. The difference was quite large: while 86% of respondents had adopted social technologies, only 16% were measuring ROI.

Shocking, yes. But does this tell the whole story? While ROI is a great metric for tying efforts to a dollar value… It’s not the be-all end-all of social media measurement. In fact, if it is the only metric you’re looking at, ROI is actually poor measure of social media efforts.

If you are using it to its full potential, the real value of social media is in the relationships you build with customers and potential customers. The stronger these relationships are, the more likely they are going to turn into money–either directly or through referrals. This is what is often referred to as community building, and why many companies are hiring community managers. The downside to community building, from a measurement point of view, is it’s not an immediate gain… It’s not easily measureable and it’s definitely not easily turned into an ROI figure.

How can you measure community building? Engagement–Look at who is talking about you and how often. Sentiment–Are people talking about you positively or negatively? If you do it well and track these relationships over time, you’ll likely see them turn into dollars.

It should also be mentioned that community building is not just about posting to Twitter/Facebook, blogging and creating Youtube videos. It’s also essential you have a solid product or service and excellent customer service to succeed. This is another measurement obstacle, because you can have the best community manager in the world, but still fail if your offering is not up to par. This problem can’t necessarily be captured in ROI or any other metric unless it’s overwhelmingly obvious (it’s often not).

I can’t comment on whether or not the respondents in the study are measuring more than ROI, but I would hope so. What do you think? Should I be more worried about the lack of ROI measurement?

Have you ever jotted down an idea for a blog—then let it swirl around in your brain for awhile to get your thoughts in order? I do this all the time and quite often never get around to writing the blog in the end.  I’m trying to find a cure for this laziness, I think it’s called Twitter.

This was just the case a few weeks back when I read the first half of a feature story in the August (print) edition ofVanity Fairabout Politico–a politically obsessed news organization that reports every whisper heard in Washington on-demand.

On the first go around I had only read page one of the feature and I was already thinking about the great blog post this story was going to make about how Politico could salvage the future of newspapers.  You see, the sub-headline read as follows

Four old-media veterans may have solved the future of news with the Politico Web site, whose audience of six million obsessives and insiders consumes–and feeds–a real-time download of power data. The twist? Politico’s print version is what’s helped make it profitable.

few paragraph’s into the story I was extremely intrigued.  Four mainstream print guys had bucked the institution, created their own gig, figured out what their audience craved, and were profitable…and get this: it was the print edition that was helping them roll in profits.

They had 100 staffers, 6.7 million unique monthly visitors for politico.com, and seemed to scoop all the mainstream media on a daily basis.  What was the secret to their success that they could share with the rest of the media world? I was curious to find out and blog about it—but got pulled away from the story with something more pressing.

A week later I finished reading the article, and to my dismay, there was no secret.  There were no profits. Just projections of perhaps breaking even according to the CEO.

‘it appears….according to C.E.O. Fred Ryan, that Politico, paying its staffers at nearly the level that The Washington Post pays (starting salaries for reporters at the Post are about $45,000 per year), has hit breakeven.’

As the story unfolds we find out the online advertising wasn’t strong enough to keep it afloat, so a print version with almost verbatim copy is being produced as a freebie. The additional ad revenue from print is bringing in just enough to help keep it going.   Unfortunately, despite how much politico’s love Politico, they had not as I hoped figured out a secret business model for media to thrive.   All of their ideas have already been tried by mainstream media in attempts to survive:

• • Pay journalists peanuts. Check.
  • Build up our online audience. Check.
  • Help journalists become trusted brands. Check.
  • Scoop the competition. Check.
  • Try a freebie print version supported by ads. Check.

I’m definitely being a little unfair to Politico; building an online audience of 6.7 million people with a century mark of employees is a great success story.  But the sub-headline of the story had promised me so much more—it had sparked a good idea for the blog and I thought I knew what the message would be.  And there’s the saving grace and an actual link back to media analysis. You can never judge an article by just the headline or even the first few paragraphs.  To properly assess an article the full story needs be taken into account, and inherently that is problem with automated sentiment analysis the way it is being done today. It can take words and phrases out of context (or in this case in context) and not properly relay the right information to decision makers in an analysis report.

Over the years we’ve relied on our analysts to provide clients with a human touch–including toning and sentiment analysis. I’m a big believer in automation – and I think there are strides being made to increase accuracy and insights – but any proper media analysis program needs to have human intervention at various checkpoints to ensure the information being shared can be trusted and acted upon.  Otherwise you might just think that the solution to the newspaper industry’s woes have been solved…I’m still waiting, but hopeful.