Year: 2010

January 2010 Headlines: Edmonton Journal vs. Edmonton Sun

I think it’s fair to say that Edmonton’s two major dailies have strong stereotypes attached to them. The Edmonton Journal, as the capital region’s newspaper of record, is generally considered reliable, encompassing, and important, with an emphasis on politics and current events. The Edmonton Sun, which has just less than half of the Journal’s weekly circulation (according to data from 2008), is generally considered a bit more tabloid-like, with an emphasis on sports and special sections. But I’m not happy with stereotypes – I like data!

There is obviously much more to a newspaper than its headlines, but I figured that was a good starting point for comparison. Using data extracted from Twitter (which means it may be incomplete) I compared headlines from The Journal and The Sun for January 2010. I counted 662 headlines for The Journal (in blue) and 589 headlines for The Sun (in red).

 

The most frequently used words in The Journal’s headlines were: Edmonton, Alberta, new, fire, man, woman, Oilers, Calgary, gallery, and police.

The most frequently used words in The Sun’s headlines were: Haiti, Canada, city, man, Canadian, Edmonton, Alberta, Hatian, new, and quake.

Here’s a quick comparison of the average length, average number of words, and average Automated Readability Index (ARI) for each headline:

I’m not sure that calculating the ARI for a headline is valid, but calculating it for the collection of headlines isn’t valid either (because they aren’t equivalent to sentences). I did look at the collection though – The Journal used 865 complex words, whereas The Sun used 552 (a complex word is three syllables or more, as determined using this online tool).

I don’t know what the takeaway is here, but I thought it was interesting enough to share. I’ll probably revisit this again in the future, with additional news sources, and probably some sentiment analysis as well. If you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments!

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – January 2010

Welcome to the first State of the Edmonton Twittersphere of 2010, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton, AB. You can see last month’s stats here.

For information on the data, definitions, and other background, click here.

For January 2010:

# of local users: 5841 (an increase of 324 from December)
# of tweets by local users: 328227
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 20865 (6.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 114740 (35.0%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 81789 (24.9%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 23633 (7.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 18077 (5.5%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • Just under 51% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 7.4 tweets per minute in January (compared to 6.7 tweets per minute in December).
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was January 27 at 13518. On average, 10588 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 9568 in December).
  • Of the 114740 replies posted by local users this month, 41713 or 36.4% were to other local users.
  • A total of 1236 users posted 50 times or more in January. In comparison, 854 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most followed local users:

  1. revtrev
  2. Pat_Lorna
  3. wearestereos
  4. LesM
  5. dancinginlife
  6. DrBarryLycka
  7. dragonage
  8. NHL_Oilers
  9. DarleneV
  10. subunit1

Here are the top ten most listed local users:

  1. DaBaby
  2. revtrev
  3. dragonage
  4. redneckmommy
  5. NHL_Oilers
  6. paradepro
  7. dancinginlife
  8. Pat_Lorna
  9. gsiemens
  10. wearestereos

Here are the top ten most active local users:

  1. EdmontonBizcaf
  2. Gen22
  3. etownmelly
  4. PsychicJay
  5. rootnl2k
  6. GeneralTekno
  7. Lois_Taylor
  8. trinamlee
  9. steenyweeny
  10. Sajeder

Here are the top ten most active local users using #yeg:

  1. WeatherEdmonton
  2. edmontonjournal
  3. DebraWard
  4. iNews880
  5. cbcedmonton
  6. yegtraffic
  7. Tamara_Stecyk
  8. livingsanctuary
  9. ZoomJer
  10. BrentWelch

Final Thoughts

Slight increase in the number of active users this month, which basically brings us back to where we were in November. Quite a significant increase in the number of tweets posted this month too – we even broke 13,000 per day!

Edmonton continues to have the most tagged tweets and the most conversations (replies to one another). We’ve had a bunch of tweetups lately too. We really do have an amazing community in Edmonton!

I’m going to do a separate post on Olympics tweets, because I think there is some really interesting data there. Edmontonians posted a lot during the opening cemeronies!

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – January 2010

Welcome to the first State of the Calgary Twittersphere of 2010, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary, AB. You can see last month’s stats here.

For information on the data, definitions, and other background, click here.

For January 2010:

# of local users: 7371 (an increase of 249 from December)
# of tweets by local users: 351342
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 13259 (3.8%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 105309 (30.0%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 112342 (32.0%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 24998 (7.1%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 19721 (5.6%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • Just under 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 7.9 tweets per minute in January (compared to 7.3 tweets per minute in December).
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was January 27 at 13935. On average, 11334 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 10472 in December).
  • Of the 105309 replies posted by local users this month, 28981 or 27.5% were to other local users.
  • A total of 1274 users posted 50 times or more in January. In comparison, 1182 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most followed local users:

  1. douglasi
  2. cristinereyes21
  3. MarkIsMusing
  4. OksanaIrwin
  5. CrazyMechanic
  6. TOMIMWizard
  7. VeronicaHay
  8. CassieSTROM
  9. LeeCoates
  10. WestJet

Here are the top ten most listed local users:

  1. douglasi
  2. cristinereyes21
  3. VeerUpdate
  4. jwatson68
  5. WestJet
  6. NHLFlames
  7. izzynobre
  8. uppercasemag
  9. dayhomemama
  10. ThankASoldier

Here are the top ten most active local users:

  1. CalgaryBizcaf
  2. ProtruckR
  3. nscafe
  4. izzynobre
  5. MarketingHits
  6. a_picazo
  7. alex_ruiz
  8. opiatedsherpa
  9. that_angela
  10. BoldlyBeautiful

Here are the top ten most active local users using #yyc:

  1. WeatherCalgary
  2. alex_ruiz
  3. nscafe
  4. C_DIG
  5. a_picazo
  6. JohnCornegge
  7. lonnietaylor
  8. that_angela
  9. jcpollock
  10. paulinate

Final Thoughts

Slight increase in the number of active users this month, no doubt thanks to the holidays ending and everyone getting back to work. The number of tweets posted per day increased throughout the month as well, breaking the 13,000 mark twice. There was also a slight increase in the number of tagged tweets.

State of the Ottawa Twittersphere – January 2010

Welcome to the first State of the Ottawa Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Ottawa, ON.

For information on the data, definitions, and other background, click here.

For January 2010:

# of local users: 8562
# of tweets by local users: 426258
# of tweets by local users containing #ottawa/#yow: 2828 (0.7%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 150400 (35.3%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 113889 (26.7%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 40243 (9.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 18104 (4.2%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • Just under 52% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 9.6 tweets per minute in January.
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was January 27 at 17041. On average, 13750 local tweets were posted each day.
  • Of the 150400 replies posted by local users this month, 41710 or 27.7% were to other local users.
  • A total of 1618 users posted 50 times or more in January. In comparison, 1235 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most followed local users:

  1. pmharper
  2. billbateswins
  3. campbed
  4. Jason_OToole
  5. ErinBlaskie
  6. BlackBerryCool
  7. snookca
  8. knealemann
  9. MattMossop
  10. AtifMirzaRemax

Here are the top ten most listed local users:

  1. CharlesCrosbie
  2. snookca
  3. pmharper
  4. BlackBerryCool
  5. michelfortin
  6. ErinBlaskie
  7. michaelgeist
  8. surinderJsingh
  9. CloutMarketing
  10. plevy

Here are the top ten most active local users:

  1. whoreformusic
  2. kareenaristide
  3. CRAcorruption
  4. ice89
  5. LorenaHeletea
  6. Mr_SaGz
  7. bitofmomsense
  8. wickedcanadagal
  9. all_caps
  10. Dr_Tania

Final Thoughts

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with the Winnipeg stats, so learning that they don’t use a local hashtag was interesting, not surprising. But it’s safe to say that I am surprised local hashtag usage in Ottawa is so low (unless they use one I’m not aware of): I counted just 112 tweets tagged with #yow, and just 2716 with #ottawa. As you can see above, that’s less than 1% of all tweets posted during the month. Maybe some of that is due to the federal/national focus that is natural for Canada’s capital city. Ottawa users do reply to one another more frequently than Winnipeggers do, however.

Another surprise: there are a lot of users in Ottawa and they post a lot! I’m looking forward to seeing if the numbers grow.

Christmas Charity Auction Dinner at Ric’s Grill

When Graham Hicks asked if I wanted to be involved in the Edmonton Sun’s annual Christmas Charity Auction back in October, I was flattered. And to honest, a little worried. I would host one of the “media dinners” – local media personalities paired up with a restaurant. With well-known local celebs like Global TV’s Gord Steinke and Lynda Steele (who went for $2255), who would bid on me, I wondered? What if no one bid on me?! Still, I relished the opportunity to represent Edmonton’s social media community, not to mention partake in two of my favorite things: meeting new people, and food.

It turns out there were 16 bids on my media dinner, with the final bid going for $140. Not bad! The auction supports the Edmonton Christmas Bureau, Sign of Hope, Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation, and the United Way. A total of $240,000 was raised last year, down from the $350,000 raised in 2008 but still quite good. Since 2003, the charity auction has raised an impressive $1.3 million!

Last Wednesday, Sharon and I were joined by winning bidder Terri Lynn and her friends Kelly, Sue, and Ginette, at Ric’s Grill downtown. The foursome had participated in the auction in years past, winning a very enjoyable dinner with CBC’s Ron Wilson and Peter Brown (with Gurvinder Bhatia at Bistecca). An evening with those guys is pretty hard to top, but I thought our dinner went really well!

After introductions (and thanks to Terri Lynn for bidding on me) our conversation shifted to food and local restaurants, given that all of us are such fans. Terri Lynn shared that she reads Sharon’s blog every morning, something that I think an increasing number of Edmontonians do! We talked a little about memorable blogging moments, given that the Alberta budget website thing had just happened, and of course about how Sharon and I got into blogging.

Dinner was great too – I especially enjoyed the almond goat cheese crostini starter. Sharon wrote more about the dinner here.

Thanks again to Terri Lynn, Kelly, Sue, and Ginette, as well as Ric’s Grill, for a great evening, and congratulations to Graham Hicks and the Edmonton Sun for another successful auction!

State of the Winnipeg Twittersphere – January 2010

Welcome to the first State of the Winnipeg Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Winnipeg, MB.

For information on the data, definitions, and other background, click here.

For January 2010:

# of local users: 4107
# of tweets by local users: 211554
# of tweets by local users containing #winnipeg/#ywg: 1958 (0.9%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 73028 (34.5%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 53271 (25.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 13894 (6.6%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 7024 (3.3%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • Just under 48% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 4.8 tweets per minute in January.
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was January 25 at 8408. On average, 6824 local tweets were posted each day.
  • Of the 73028 replies posted by local users this month, 13608 or 18.6% were to other local users.
  • A total of 831 users posted 50 times or more in January. In comparison, 558 users posted just once.

Here are the top ten most followed local users:

  1. 333AutismNews
  2. LordBieber
  3. ColemanMichael
  4. crackberrykevin
  5. Dr_BobsEmporium
  6. PetLvr
  7. WayneHurlbert
  8. MarloBoux
  9. randypenner
  10. George_Williams

Here are the top ten most listed local users:

  1. crackberrykevin
  2. LordBieber
  3. soulpoetrysite
  4. 333AutismNews
  5. Petiethecat
  6. lyndseo
  7. neuroaster
  8. davidzinger
  9. theweakerthans
  10. ManitobaMuseum

Here are the top ten most active local users:

  1. Damiqua2
  2. MerissaLeanne
  3. sanchez_xo
  4. Petiethecat
  5. BieberIsABabe
  6. CarebearJNK_DEW
  7. neuroaster
  8. 333AutismNews
  9. fpbowen
  10. iluvjoshramsay

Final Thoughts

It turns out users in Winnipeg do not use the airport code hashtag that many other Canadian cities have adopted! I recorded just 7 tweets by local users tagged with #ywg in January (interestingly, Edmontonians mentioned #ywg 20 times in January). Even #winnipeg isn’t that popular, with just 1951 tweets. In addition to the lack of hashtagging, Winnipeg users don’t seem to reply to one another as much as other cities do.

Now that we have the data, it would be interesting to dig deeper to find out why a community like Winnipeg doesn’t get as organized online as some others. I’ll continue tracking (and improving my tracking).

CTV Edmonton launches Inner Tube blog

On Friday afternoon, just hours before the start of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, CTV Edmonton launched a new blog called Inner Tube. I’m not sure if the timing was just a coincidence or if CTV Edmonton purposefully wanted to “soft launch” the blog, but either way, this “online experiment of sorts” is something that’s worth paying attention to.

First, the key points:

  • Inner Tube is a group blog. Entries will be written by a variety of people at CTV Edmonton, including Carrie Doll and Josh Classen.
  • This is an Edmonton project, not something that came from Toronto.
  • Posts are edited for clarity, comments are moderated.
  • From the about blurb: “You’ll read stories about the inner workings of the news process, how we develop our stories, or just casual observations about what makes north central Alberta so special.”

I called Stewart Shaw, web guru at CTV Edmonton, to learn more about the site that he has been working to launch for the last six months or so. My first question was why it took so long! Stewart very democratically explained that many people just aren’t as comfortable with technology as the rest of us, and that convincing all of the necessary people took time (as it would have in any typical corporate environment). He was pleased with how things progressed.

Stewart told me that CTV Edmonton sees this as an extension of what they’ve been doing for more than 50 years. The station has always felt that it was part of the community, and the blog is just a modern way of ensuring that remains true. And while the CTV Edmonton account on Twitter has been quite successful, and most stories on the news website offer the ability to leave comments, neither offers the same kind of connection that the blog can (though Carrie Doll, Josh Classen, and other personalities regularly interact with other Twitter users). Stewart said that the Save Local TV open house last year opened some eyes – it was the first time in a long time that CTV Edmonton had invited the public to the station, and they were overwhelmed by the response. The idea with Inner Tube is to open up a little, to provide a glimpse behind the curtain from the people that make CTV Edmonton tick.

Local media blogs are not new, of course. The Edmonton Journal, iNews880, and Edmonton Sun have had blogs on their websites for a long time, with varying levels of success. The difference is that CTV Edmonton has created a group blog that everyone will contribute to, rather than individual blogs for each employee or personality. The idea is that it’ll be a little easier to keep fresh, and also to build a following with. I think the jury’s still out on which approach is more successful, but I like that CTV Edmonton is experimenting with something different.

Inner Tube is off to a good start, with roughly half a dozen posts already up on the blog. It’ll be interesting to see how it evolves – I hope it opens the door to even more online activity from the local media. Congrats to Stewart and everyone else at CTV Edmonton for launching Inner Tube, and good luck!

Notes for 2/15/2010

Hope you had a nice long weekend, celebrating Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, and Family Day! Here are my weekly notes:

Edmonton Notes for 2/13/2010

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Valentine’s Day in Edmonton: Deal or No Deal?

Sharon and I decided to collaborate on this post. Enjoy!

Sharon:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a holiday where consuming chocolate is the national norm, and for an occasion that is marked with an indulgent feast. And though I realize that Valentine’s Day has been escalating in its commercial nature over the past two decades (and one that that Mack and I embraced wholeheartedly last year), a gander at one too many pre-fixe restaurant menus sent me over the edge this time around.

Of course, restaurants shouldn’t be blamed for feeding a consumer-driven hunger for extravagance, excess, and unbridled expense on February 14. No doubt, some meals, and the ultimate experience of spending time with your sweetheart could be worth every penny. Also, some restaurants do offer embellishments – providing a rose to the lady, employing a musician to set the ambiance, offering a treat at meal’s end – but could it really be worth the heightened price tag? How much more are patrons charged on Valentine’s Day, compared with any other day? With Mack’s penchant for statistics and graphs, we set to find out.

Mack:

Coming up with the data was harder than we thought! Finding the set price of the Valentine’s Day menu was easy, but finding something to compare it to was not. We decided to generate a comparable figure using the closest dishes we could find on the regular menu. Definitely not scientific, but fairly representative.

We started by finding as many restaurants with Valentine’s Day menus as we could, and then narrowed it down to those which also had regular menus online. We ended up with 12 restaurants:

The average Valentine’s Day menu price was $71.08 per person, with prices ranging from $35 per person at The Dish to $160 per person at Red Ox Inn. The average regular menu price was surprisingly similar at $69.65 per person. On average, Valentine’s Day menus featured 4 courses.

So what’s the best deal? By far, Madison’s Grill. Their 6 course Valentine’s Day menu is just $85 per person – the regular menu would cost roughly $116 per person. Of course, we’re not sure about portion sizes, but based on our recent Farmers’ Market Dinner experience, we expect they will not be small. The worst deal? Hardware Grill – you pay $31 more for the Valentine’s Day menu than you would on a regular day.

I wouldn’t cite any of this data in an academic paper, and the numbers don’t take into account ambiance, food quality, freedom of choice and service, but it was fun to generate just the same. I was surprised to discover that the Valentine’s Day menus aren’t that much more expensive after all!

Sharon:

So numbers aside, after scrutinizing more than a dozen pre-fixe menus, I can tell you that considering the menu options only, both Mack and I agree that Hardware Grill wins, hands down. We were salivating as we read through each course (butternut squash-mascarpone tortelloni with truffle butter cream sauce and fresh chanterelles? Porcini crusted sea bass, lobster-truffled potato crêpes, white corn-arugula & gulf prawns? Where do we sign up?).

While I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend any one restaurant (personal choice being that last intangible), based on our experience, Madison’s Grill and The Dish would top our list. If you’re looking for innovative, creative food that celebrates local producers, there would be no better choice than Blair Lebsack’s dining room in the Union Bank Inn. However, if you desire something more casual and comforting, The Dish is a great choice with its consistent kitchen and friendly service.

Mack:

You could, of course, avoid restaurants altogether and cook that special someone a tasty meal at home! Because as Sharon pointed out, Valentine’s Day is about spending time with your sweetheart, not spending lots of money. If you do go the restaurant route, keep in mind that there are more to choose from than the dozen we mentioned here.

We hope you enjoyed this light-hearted look at “Black Sunday” (a la Eater) in Edmonton, and we wish you a very happy Valentine’s Day!