Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
Arrested Development: talk on Twitter and Tumblr
One minute after midnight (PDT!) on Sunday, May 26th, Arrested Development (AD) fans will be gathered around their glowing computer screens as the entire fourth season premieres on Netflix. Excited fans have been discussing the countdown to their streaming binges on Twitter and Tumblr, and as Gene Parmesan is unavailable to disclose their discussions with you, you’ll just have to stick with us instead. (Although it’s entirely possible we’re just him in costume.)
Tumblr
As of yesterday- four days away from the season four premiere- 486.6k Tumblr users generated 19.1k posts with over 1 million notes, since we started tracking on April 22nd. Posts about Arrested Development on Tumblr spiked on May 13th (that day accounts for about 8% of total posts so far; we’ll get to why in a minute), and note activity on posts spiked before that, on April 24th: the day that character posters were released.
On May 13th, the big spike in posts came from the release of the first trailer for season four, which can be found in the second of ten most popular AD posts. From April up to this week, the most popular posts from the Tumblr discussion came mostly from fan-run Arrested Development focused blogs; half of the top ten posts came from the aptly named The Bluth Company, including the most popular post overall. (Usually seen as a GIF, that moment from the show is just as fun when drawn out into a high-quality photo series.)
And for those familiar with Tumblr’s format, it’s no surprise that photo posts were the most popular: 12.7k of the total 19.1k posts were photo posts, trailed by 3.5k text posts and under 1.5k video posts. The show title was far and away the most popular tag, featured in 11.5k of the total posts.
Lucille naturally gets two tags of her own, even if Tumblr is something she would probably be suspicious of.
Out of the total 105.4k tweets made mentioning Arrested Development on Twitter, activity spiked on different days than on Tumblr, with the most contributors (13.9k) sharing the most tweets (16.1k) on May 20th:
Overall since May 14th there have been 65.1k tweets from 75.7k contributors; that averages out to a little over 11.7k tweets a day, with nearly 1.5 tweets per contributor (we imagine those half-tweets wear cutoff shorts all the time, even in the shower).
The two most retweeted tweets came from unofficial news and quote account bluthquotes and Arrested Development series creator Mitch Hurwitz. They had 2.3k and 2k retweets respectively:
Really the most burning question all of this has left us with is this: is it May 26th yet? We should probably all use the remaining days to stock up on juice boxes, Cornballers and frozen bananas since we’ll be sleeping through all the Memorial Day cookouts with our families to spend hours with the Bluth clan instead.
Twitter’s first comedy festival: by the numbers
Twitter and comedy are no strangers, but last week saw something unprecedented in 140 characters or less: a comedy festival held entirely on Twitter. Comedy Central’s #ComedyFest pulled in some of the biggest names that already joke on Twitter daily, in addition to those established comedians completely new to the platform, such as Mel Brooks.
#ComedyFest gave us his first- and only- tweet.
The festival officially ran April 29-May 3, and featured a variety of events, ranging from moderated discussions on comedy, to individual comedians live-tweeting Ambien trips and television shows, and even included Twitter roasts. Reach for the week peaked on the first day, April 29:
4.7k tweets from 3.3k contributors reached 28.7 million unique Twitter accounts on that day, a nice chunk of the overall 17.6k tweets from 10.3k contributors over the entire week (a little under ¼ of total tweets and ⅓ of the total contributor amounts, respectively).
Mel Brooks’s first and only tweet was the second-most retweeted on April 29, second only to one from Workaholics actor Adam DeVine.
But one of the more interesting- and certainly the newest- uses of the platform during the festival was found at the bottom of the retweet list:
Cartoonist and writer Marlo Meekins used the new six-second video app Vine to create some intriguing and funny video segments during #ComedyFest, including this one of a cartoon cat running rampant across her legs and another of her throwing away the loading icon from the video. Clever and the result of careful work (one mishap while recording a Vine and you have to start over from the beginning) these show a fantastic potential future for comedic media.
While perhaps not an earth-shattering success, Twitter’s first comedy festival did see solid participation and was fantastic exposure for some up-and-coming comedians to be billed alongside the more established. While famous names might attract more followers, a space like Twitter evens the playing field when it comes to activities like live-tweeting a show via hashtag; every joke made with the hashtag ends up in the same place for interested people to scroll through, giving newbies a chance to get noticed and followed by fans and other comedians alike.
Overall, with the rise of multitasking on a second screen while watching TV in America, it makes sense to take entertainment where the people are already talking about it.
Join us for a Tumblr engagement webinar
Please join us this week for a webinar focused on learning more about Tumblr engagement. Kenyatta Cheese, Co-Founder of Everybody at Once, and Jenn Deering Davis, Co-Founder of Union Metrics, will sit down to talk about Tumblr, brands and how (and why) to foster engagement on the platform.
The webinar will be on Thursday, May 9th at 2:00 p.m. EDT.
Sign up here.
[Source: Tumblr staff blog]
Kenyatta is part of Everybody at Once, a company working on audience development and social strategy for media, entertainment, and sports. You may have seen his work on the very popular Doctor Who Tumblr for BBC America.
Jenn is co-founder and Chief Customer Officer of Union Metrics, the company that makes Tumblr’s preferred analytics application. Jenn holds a PhD in Organizational Communication & Technology from UT Austin.
During the webinar, Kenyatta and Jenn will talk about what goes into a successful Tumblr campaign, how to measure engagement, improve your content, and more. And we’ll share a coupon code for a month-long free trial of Union Metrics for Tumblr analytics at the end.
See you next week!
How to vet information on Twitter
Image courtesy State Library of Queensland, Australia
When news breaks, it now often breaks on Twitter. In the throes of a national or international emergency or other breaking news, a lot of information comes pouring in quickly. Unfortunately, there is always bad information mixed in with the good. Here are some tips for making sure information is solid before you act on it, or choose to share it with others:
- First: check the source. Is it a reputable news publication (The New York Times), or is it a publication known for publishing joke content (The Onion), or pushing out anything they think will get the most views (The National Enquirer)? If you don’t know, don’t act on it or retweet it.
- Take everything with a grain of salt. Even the biggest publications feel pressure to keep everyone updated, especially via social media, so they may share information that isn’t confirmed with authorities yet, or has been misinterpreted.
- On that note, look for retractions or updates on claims, and remember that “allegedly”, “reportedly” or “hearing reports” doesn’t mean something has been confirmed. “Sources say” isn’t solid if you don’t know who the sources are.
- Search hashtags to find repeated links and information; this can often show you the origination of a claim so you can see if it’s reliable. When breaking news is happening, hashtags will likely flood your feed and start trending. If they don’t, see which hashtags trusted publications are using, then search those.
- News outlets will likely tell you which reporters they have in the area, or will confirm information from people who are tweeting on the ground.
- Check Snopes. They quickly list and categorize anything that might be an unfounded conspiracy theory, or that needs confirmation. Sometimes old fake photographs resurface too, as these did during Hurricane Sandy in the fall of 2012.
- Finally, be cautious of scams. While the best parts of humanity will reach out to help during a natural disaster or other tragedy, others will try to profit by creating false charities or funds. Verify before you donate with sources like Charity Navigator.
If you do share something that turns out to be false or unverified, say so and commit to sharing only the best information moving forward. Consider just listening until the situation becomes clearer, then use Twitter and other social media to see how you can help, no matter where you are.
Join us for our biweekly demo of TweetReach Pro!
Interested in learning more about TweetReach? Join us for our biweekly demo of TweetReach Pro.
TweetReach can help you measure the reach of brands, campaigns and events on Twitter. It’s a dead simple way to discover how far your message has traveled, what tweets are getting the most traction, and who’s influencing the conversation around your brand or product. Our demos usually take 15-20 minutes followed by an open Q&A session. Attendees will receive a discount code at the end.
Pick the date that works the best for you, and we’ll see you there! Register here, and be sure to select your preferred date from the drop-down menu:
Wednesday, April 24 | 12pm-12:30pm EDT
Wednesday, May 8 | 12pm-12:30pm EDT
Wednesday, May 22 | 12pm-12:30pm EDT
Wednesday, June 5 | 12pm-12:30pm EDT
Wednesday, June 19 | 12pm-12:30pm EDT
Photo courtesy Powerhouse Museum Collection
Join us to learn more about TweetReach!
Interested in learning more about TweetReach Pro and our other Twitter analytics offerings? We’re holding two webinar demos next week, conveniently scheduled for our customers outside of the United States. Anyone is welcome to attend, of course!
Sign up for one of these short demos where we’ll tell you more about TweetReach Pro, our historical analytics, and our snapshot reports. To register, just follow the one of the links below:
Let us know if you have any questions. We look forward to having you there!
Photo courtesy Public Domain Pictures
Game of Thrones season 3 premiere on Twitter
97.6 million accounts were potentially reached on Twitter about the Game of Thrones premiere last night
Game of Thrones premiere tweet stats
The internet was excited for the season 3 premiere of Game of Thrones on HBO last night. You can see the spikes in Twitter reach about it in the graph above (reach in blue, exposure in yellow, times in PDT), particularly leading up to and during the premiere – nearly 98 million unique Twitter accounts received GoT tweets yesterday. In total, 330k people churned out more than 596k tweets yesterday. The top 5 hashtags were #GameofThrones, #GoT, #GoTSigil and #jointherealm (these two are about the ability to create and share your own house sigil), as well as #GetGlue.
The last one is for social television app GetGlue: you check in to the show or sporting event you’re watching and then you can see how many others are watching with you, leave comments about it, comment on other’s posts, and more. You also have the option to share on Twitter and other platforms what you’ve checked into on GetGlue, automatically adding the #GetGlue hashtag.
This is particularly interesting in the wake of a recent study from the Time Warner Media Lab (via AdWeek) which found that emotional engagement on television viewing is higher if you watch with someone else, or if you log in using a social app like GetGlue:
Did you watch Game of Thrones last night? Was it social? In person or digitally? Tell us about it in the comments!
SXSWi 2011 vs. SXSWi 2013 in numbers
Two years ago we did a recap of SXSWi 2011 in tweets after the five days of the Interactive portion of the festival were over. (In case you’re still unfamiliar, SXSW is a great big gathering of all kinds of interactive professionals – from social media folks to software developers and startup founders, to designers, researchers and basically anyone interested in the digital space. SXSW Interactive is a tech conference, and is followed by the film and music portions of the festival.)
Here’s a table comparing the tweet volume, total number of unique contributors, and overall reach for 2011 vs. 2013:
What a difference two years can make!
Here’s a breakdown of the 2013 SXSW tweet activity:
Activity breakdown for tweets and contributors during SXSWi 2013
Were you at SXSWi? How was your experience? Tell us in the comments, old hats and newbies alike.
SXSW preview: How Twitter is changing how we watch TV
One of our very own will be presenting at SXSW Interactive this year. Jenn Deering Davis, Union Metrics Co-Founder and Chief Community Officer, will be speaking about how Twitter has changed how we watch TV on Saturday, March 9 during the festival. We wanted to get a preview of her presentation, so we thought we’d ask her a few questions about social TV and share her responses with you.
- How do you think social media has changed how viewers communicate about television shows?
Social media provides a great place for us to talk about our favorite TV shows and characters. It allows fans distributed across the country – even the globe – to share the experience of watching a show together. TV is such an important part of our culture, particularly in the United States; many of us watch some TV every single day, and we’re deeply connected to the shows we watch and the people in them. We want to talk about TV, and social media channels like Twitter are the perfect place for those conversations.
- What are some of the creative strategies that networks and advertisers are employing to tap into social TV?
There’s certainly a lot of hashtag use right now. You can’t watch a TV show – or a commercial – without seeing hashtags all over the place. Some of the more interesting fan engagement initiatives include creating character Twitter accounts that tweet during and between episodes, sharing content exhaust like behind-the scenes photos and outtakes, and running social games and contests to unlock premium content.
- What shows are doing social TV really well?
So many shows and show runners are doing interesting things on social media. Pretty Little Liars is one of the canonical examples – PLL and the team at ABC Family have created a huge and highly engaged following on Twitter and Facebook. As for others, I love how characters from Archer tweet as themselves (and to each other!), how Hollywood award shows like the Golden Globes post pictures from the red carpet and backstage, and how Netflix capitalized on the huge social interest around its new show House of Cards. There are so many great examples. For more, you’ll just have to come to the panel.
- How important is a standard measurement system for social TV and do you think Twitter’s work with Nielsen will push it forward?
Networks have been using Twitter as a way to understand the real-time pulse of their shows for several years, and I think it’s smart of Nielsen and Twitter to work together to formalize some of that. We can learn a lot about what fans think about a show by measuring their tweets. For example, tracking minute-by-minute volume helps us understand viewer interest spikes, telling us exactly what onscreen moments are exciting to the audience. I think this area will mature a great deal over the next few years.
- Twitter is at the center of the social TV discussion, but what other platforms do you think are poised to become a larger part of this movement?
Twitter was the first social channel to be really successful in the TV space for a variety of reasons (which I’ll discuss in more detail at SXSW), but we’re starting to see a lot more fan participation in other channels, as well. Tumblr is a big one, because millions of fans go to Tumblr to share and remix all kinds of amazing visual content about their favorite shows, and that content spreads like crazy on Tumblr. Social TV conversations happen in all the social media spaces we spend time in, but we’ve just heard the most about Twitter so far. I think that’s changing.
- How does online streaming content tap into social TV? Will advertisers cater to this demographic, or keep pushing for live viewing?
Great question. We’re starting to understand more about how social impacts (and is impacted by) both live and streamed viewing. I’ll get into this more during the talk, but we’re actually seeing a comeback in live TV right now! It’s fascinating stuff, but I’ll leave that as a teaser for now.
If you want to hear more, then be sure to check out Jenn’s talk at SXSW in Austin next week. And be sure to go say hi afterwards – she’d love to talk to you. She might even have party invites to share if you ask nicely.
10 SXSWi 2013 panels you won’t want to miss
We already mentioned that we’ll be at SXSWi- now just a mere two weeks away!- and we’d love to see you, so drop us a line in the comments if you’ll be there and let us know if you’re hosting an event or participating in a panel. Speaking of panels, we’ve got some suggestions for panels and other events you’ll want to be sure and work into your schedule:
Photo Credit: The Library of Virginia
1. Building Tools for Creativity | Presenter: David Karp (Founder | Tumblr)
2. Get Ready to Rumble! How WWE Is Crushing Social TV | Presenters: John Cena (WWE Superstar | WWE), Khris Loux (Co-Founder & CEO | Echo), Perkins Miller (EVP, Digital Media | WWE) & Stephanie McMahon (EVP, Creative Dev & Operations | WWE)
3. Data, Storytelling & Breaking Through the Noise | Presenters: Ashley Brown (Dir, Digital Comm/Social Media | The Coca-Cola Company), Dustee Jenkins (VP of PR | Target), Gary Goldhammer (Sr Digital Strategist | H+K Strategies) & Jon Steinberg (Pres/COO |BuzzFeed)
4. Brands, Bloggers & the Social Commerce Future | Lisa Stone (CEO & Co-founder | BlogHer LLC)
5. Mosh Pit of Experts: The Future of Social (Core Conversation) | Presenters: Sam Decker (CEO & Co-Founder | Mass Relevance Inc) & Sean McDonald (Managing Dir | Pricewaterhouse Coopers)
6. The Rise of the Planet of the Creatives | Presenters: Claire Mazur (Co-founder | Of a Kind), Danielle Strle (Dir of Prod | Tumblr), Jamie Beck (Photographer, co-creator of the Cinemagraph | cinemagraphs.com) & Jen Bekman (Founder, CEO 20×200/Jen Bekman Projects Inc)
7. Social Circles vs. Social Media | Presenters: Austin Carr (Staff Writer | Fast Company), Brian Schechter (Co-Founder & Co-CEO | How About We), Dylan Casey (Head of Prod Mgmt | Path) & Jared Hecht (Co-Founder | GroupMe)
8. Fresh Prince + Downton Abbey: A Perfect Engagement | Cheryl Engelhardt (Composer / Songwriter | CBE Music) & Michael Schaubach (Dir of Post Production | CollegeHumor.com)
9. From 140 to 0: The Rise in Image-Based Marketing | Presenter: Nate Auerbach (Music Strategy & Outreach | Tumblr)
10. And be sure to check out our presentation on Saturday! How Twitter Has Changed How We Watch TV | Presenter: Jenn Deering Davis (Co-Founder |Union Metrics)