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State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – March 2009

Welcome to the third State of the Edmonton Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton. You can see last month’s stats here, but note that I recently discovered a few of the numbers were wrong and I have since updated the post. The two key figures, the number of local users and the number of tweets posted by local users, remain unchanged.

The source of the data this month remains the same – Twitter Search. If a user has his or her location set to Edmonton, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Leduc, Nisku, Stony Plain, Fort Saskatchewan, Beaumont, Spruce Grove, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered an Edmontonian. If a tweet is “about Edmonton” it contains either the word Edmonton, the #yeg hashtag, or both.

For March 2009:

# of local users: 3421 (an increase of 160% over February)

To clarify, that means there were 3421 users who posted at least one tweet in March 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Edmontonian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Edmonton users without their location set.

# of tweets by local users: 151146
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 6634 (4.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 55234 (36.5%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 24449 (16.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 3701 (2.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 5401 (3.6%)

This graph shows the above numbers compared to the correct numbers from last month:

I think this data is a little inaccurate, but it’s the best I could get from Twitter – here are the number of local users created per day during March:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates (remember that web includes all unidentified API calls too):

Some other interesting stats for the month:

  • The ten most active local users (most tweets first): britl, fcedmonton, angelzilla, AndyGroenink, bingofuel, TrinaMLee, akomuzikera, grempel, foomanizer, adampatterson
  • About 55% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
  • Local users posted roughly 3.4 tweets per minute in March, compared with just 1.8 per minute in February.
  • The day with the most local tweets posted was March 20th at 6061. On average, 4876 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 2598 in February).
  • Of the 55234 replies posted by local users this month, 25398 or 46% were to other local users.
  • A total of 668 local users posted 50 times or more this month. In comparison, 550 local users posted just once this month.

And finally, the top ten users in Edmonton (as of April 1st) by # of followers: Pat_Lorna, mastermaq, LesM, redneckmommy, cleversimon, ianbakewell, melanienathan, babyrumps, revtrev, ctvedmonton

As expected, the number of local users grew even faster this month than last. The local media’s recent love affair with Twitter no doubt has a lot to do with that! I suspect growth will taper off a bit in April, but will still be impressive.

A common request for these stats is to see how Edmonton compares with other cities. Within the next week or so, I’ll be posting the same stats for Calgary, so stay tuned!

Don’t forget to check out EdmontonTweetup4, taking place on April 7th. Hope to see you there!

EdmontonTweetup4 – April 7th

It’s time for another tweetup! Though it has been nearly six months since EdmontonTweetup3, there have been many other events since then, including Twestival. It’s great to see the community using the wiki to organize tweetups of all kinds! Still, it’s nice to have an “official” tweetup every now and then.

Join us a week from now for EdmontonTweetup4:

WHO: Twitterers and the Twitter-curious in Edmonton and area!
WHAT: An event to meet one another in person.
WHERE: Vintage Lounge, 10124 124th Street (map)
WHEN: Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 6:30pm
WHY: Because you’ll have a great time and will meet fascinating people!

Thanks to Brittney (@britl) for helping me get this going. You can follow the @edmontontweetup account for updates.

There are almost 30 people registered on the wiki already! You don’t have to add your name there, but it does help us if we know roughly how many people are attending. You’re welcome to simply drop by though!

If you’re new to Twitter, you might want to read this article I wrote for Connect2Edmonton.

See you there!

Millions of dollars for shorter links

So much for the recession – bit.ly, a URL shortening service, has raised $2 million in funding. TechCrunch did the math (back of the napkin, natch) and figures that bit.ly is worth about $8 million, while its more well-known competitor TinyURL is worth at least $46 million. Who knew there could be so much money in building a simple service to shorten really long web addresses and perform automatic redirects?

I used to be a TinyURL user, but switched a few months ago to bit.ly in order to get better analytics about the links I post to Twitter. These services are really a dime a dozen, however. I’m pretty amazed that investors would sink that much money into bit.ly.

Here’s what Peter Kafka wrote about the deal today:

So where’s the money? bit.ly is free to users, and the company says it doesn’t plan on selling its analytics or other tools to publishers. Team bit.ly says revenue will come sometime down the road, from something else–when they figure out what that is.

This is great news for bit.ly, obviously. And for me it means that my favorite URL shortener will be around for a while. Beyond that, I’m not sure what to think. Do the investors see a buy-out in the future, or do they really think bit.ly will be able to generate revenue at some point?

It also makes me wonder what kind of service will get some investor love next. A simple copy-paste service? TwitPic?

Earth Hour 2009 in Edmonton

Edmonton is one of five Canadian cities taking part in Earth Hour 2009, the “lights out phenomenon” led by the World Wildlife Fund. No matter your take on the event (I’m not a supporter), many people in our city will be shutting off their lights and other electronics for an hour on Saturday evening. The official time is from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM on Saturday, March 28th, 2009.

Here are some Earth Hour events taking place in Edmonton:

Know of any others? Let me know!

It’s a little silly to think that we still need to raise awareness for climate change (in my opinion), but that’s all Earth Hour can hope to accomplish. Last year, Epcor initially said that power consumption increased during Earth Hour but later revised that to say that consumption dropped 1.5%. In other words, it had no real effect. I doubt this year will be any different.

You can learn more about Earth Hour in Canada here or on Facebook, and if you’d like to register online, you can do so here. According to the Edmonton Examiner, just 1400 Edmontonians registered for Earth Hour 2008.

Questionmark enters the blogosphere

I spend most of my time at Questionmark writing code, managing projects, and performing all the other tasks that make sense for a software developer. That doesn’t stop me from thinking about how the company could take advantage of social media though! Ever since I started with the company, I’ve been looking forward to the launch of an official blog. On Tuesday, it finally happened! Introducing Getting Results – The Questionmark Blog:

Stay connected with us and with the wider testing and assessment community right here. Ask questions, post comments and take the opportunity to spark discussions.

Together, let’s explore how best to create, deliver and report on assessments that help individuals and organizations work more effectively. And let’s have some fun in the process!

I can’t take credit for getting the blog setup – our marketing team did a great job at that. I’d like to think that I helped get the idea going, however. And I’ve done my best in the last few weeks to act as an “in-house expert” of sorts, offering advice and suggestions on what to consider.

I look forward to watching the blog evolve. One of my local colleagues, Greg Pope, has already posted an entry on psychometrics! In it, he mentions the Questionmark Users Conference, coming up on April 5th in Memphis. I’m sure there will be a number of great posts that come out of that event.

I should also mention that our CEO, Eric Shepherd, has become quite a champion for blogging! He recently started his own blog, which I encourage you to check out as well.

And yes, I’m already pushing the next big thing…watch for that in the next few weeks!

Was Edmonton’s Winter Light 2009 a success?

Edmonton’s first Winter Light festival wrapped up on Saturday evening in Churchill Square with an event called Illuminations, described as a “final celebration of winter spirit”. I was there to take in the sights and sounds, just as I was on January 8th when Winter Light began its ten week celebration of winter. I found Illuminations enjoyable enough. I bought a Winter Light toque and filled my mug with hot chocolate (though it was more like warm chocolate and they were providing disposable cups, a step backward from the opening ceremonies). We wandered around looking at the displays, soaking up a bit of heat at each of the fire pits. We took some photos.

Winter Light: IlluminationsSharon & Mack

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.

I think that sentiment might apply to Winter Light 2009 as a whole. It wasn’t an outright failure, but I’m not sure it was the major success that organizer Pamela Anthony and her team were hoping for. She described the event to The Journal as “an extremely successful research project.” Successful enough for another year?

That remains to be seen. The city spent $750,000 on the festival this year. Total attendance is estimated at between 50,000 and 80,000 people, plus another 150,000 who attended the shared events such as Ice on Whyte (events which would have happened anyway). In comparison, the annual Heritage Festival costs about $500,000 to run and attracts well over 300,000 people. In 2006, the Edmonton International Fringe Festival had expenses of $1,552,797 (pdf – excluding artist ticket revenue) and total site attendance of more than 500,000 people.

Perhaps those comparisons aren’t fair. A warm, sunny day in August is a much easier sell than snow and temperatures well below freezing in February or March. So was Winter Light successful as a winter festival? The jury’s still out on that one too. Here’s what Edmonton Sun columnist Graham Hicks said on Friday:

Google "Harbin Winter Festival Pictures" to see what’s possible. This shouldn’t be so difficult. We have friends. Edmonton is twinned with Harbin and Alberta with Japan’s Hokkaido province, where Sapporo is located.

He felt the inaugural festival failed to “capture the public imagination” and was unable to move beyond the weather. I certainly didn’t hear many people talking about Winter Light in a “must attend” sort of way. And I still think that Illuminate Yaletown made better use of light than Illuminations. Bottom line: there’s definitely room for improvement.

City Council will review a report from the Winter Light organizers later this spring. Final attendance figures will no doubt be important in determining whether or not Winter Light happens again next year, but Mayor Mandel seems keen to support it anyway: “We can’t forget the idea that our job is to make sure that citizens have opportunity…this is a way for people in the wintertime to get out and enjoy our city.”

I still think the concept is a great one, and I agree that there’s lots of potential for winter tourism. My guess is that Winter Light will have to be much improved in 2010 to become a permanent fixture on Edmonton’s festival calendar, however.

What did you think of Winter Light 2009?

Facebook Connect gaining momentum

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m a big fan of Facebook Connect. It’s easy for end users to understand and use, and relatively straightforward for developers to implement also. I’ve been working on adding Connect support to ShareEdmonton, and haven’t run into any major roadblocks yet.

Recently, I started looking for information about other sites that have integrated Facebook Connect. Here are some highlights:

And most recently, I found this very interesting post about Citysearch, one of the first websites to integrate with Facebook Connect:

In the four months the site has been testing Facebook Connect, 94 percent of reviewers have published their reviews to Facebook, where an average of 40 people see them and 70 percent click back to Citysearch. That has translated into new members: daily registrations on Citysearch have tripled.

That’s fairly impressive – every item shared through Facebook generates 28 unique visitors! Though I’m not quite sure how they got those numbers, so take them with a grain of salt.

I fully expect Facebook Connect to keep gaining momentum!

Twitter’s Business Model: featured links? Probably not.

A new site called ExecTweets launched recently. It aggregates tweets from executives, and organizes them by industry. For example, you can see tweets from the tech industry’s top execs here. This is very much in line with the kind of thing I expected Twitter to launch as a way to monetize their service. Except that Twitter didn’t launch ExecTweets, Federated Media did.

VentureBeat wrote about the site today and claims that FM and its partner Microsoft are going to pay Twitter for a featured link on the Twitter site:

…FM and Microsoft are undoubtedly paying Twitter a pretty penny to launch their service in this featured area.

So how much? Well, Federated Media won’t say exactly, but it did bring up revenue sharing. “We can’t talk about terms of the deal, but we did want to share some of the revenue with Twitter to support them,” Federated Media’s John Battelle tells me.

How generous of FM.

Seriously, that’s it? That’s the business model? I really doubt it. I think VentureBeat is trying a bit too hard to nail the “we know what Twitter’s business model is” story. I have to believe that Twitter has more planned than a lousy link on the main interface. Which, thanks to the Twitter API and mobile clients, probably won’t be seen by most users anyway.

I still think Twitter will make money by somehow helping businesses (and potentially individuals willing to pay) make sense of the noise, but I don’t think they’ll do that by simply featuring links to sites built by others. TechCrunch posted today about job openings at Twitter, noting the focus on Search and the Platform API which I think supports my theory.

So far I’ve seen featured links for Twitter’s widgets, Twitter Search, and Tweetie (did they pay?). None for ExecTweets.

What do you think? Is this really the start of Twitter’s business model?

Northern Voice 2009: My Post-Mortem Post

I’ve been meaning to write this for nearly a month now! Better late than never, I guess. For the fifth straight February in a row, I was in Vancouver for Northern Voice. While there are some similarities from year-to-year, each edition of Northern Voice is unique. Last year I was a little disappointed, but not enough to keep me away.

This year, I had a much better time.

I’m not sure why exactly, because some of my criticisms from last year are still relevant. The event still wasn’t downtown. The wireless was still spotty. But many of my criticisms were addressed. The website was completely revamped this year. The schedule was much more interesting and varied.

Most important of all, there were a lot of people new to blogging and social media in attendance this year. That surprised me, especially given that the conference sold out so quickly. I think that having so many new people brought some excitement back to the event!

Some other highlights for me:

  • Rob Cottingham’s keynote entitled Teh Funny. He was hilarious and completely entertaining, I loved it!
  • Like last year, lunch was included, and it was great! Very yummy.
  • Finally got to me Rob from Techvibes in person.
  • No surprise here, but Twitter was used heavily during the conference. It was great to be able to follow some of the other sessions I couldn’t get to.
  • Sun and grass. It was nice to get away from the snow for a weekend!

On Monday, the organizers sent out a post-conference survey. Due to the Olympics next year, Northern Voice isn’t going to be held in February. Combined with the desire to address the increasing demand for the event, I think it’s safe to say that NV 2010 is going to look quite a bit different than past years. That’ll be a good thing, in my opinion. It never hurts to change things up once in a while.

See you in 2010!

Talking Twitter with CTV Edmonton

It’s no secret that the local media have jumped aboard the Twitter train in recent weeks. They seem completely smitten with it! Almost all the media outlets in Edmonton are now on Twitter in some capacity. The two big television stations, Global and CTV, have been really great about accepting feedback and assistance as they figure out how Twitter can best work for them. A couple weeks ago Karl Kovacs spoke to the Global Edmonton newsroom, and yesterday, I was fortunate enough to speak at CTV (there were also some folks from Access and 91.7 The Bounce in attendance).

I guess “speak” isn’t really the right term. I started with a bullet list of some key concepts (such as terminology and that Twitter Search rocks) but didn’t have any prepared slides or remarks. Instead, I had a browser open and encouraged everyone to fire away with questions. And fire away they did!

Questions ranged from “why do people follow other people” to “how can we best use Twitter during our newscast”. We also took some time to talk about the #teachctv discussion I had started on Twitter in the morning. I think it was a good eye-opener for most in the room to see how quick and easy it was for me to gather a bunch of feedback from the Twitter community. Thanks to everyone who posted a tweet in response.

I don’t know what CTV is going to do with the things we talked about, but the feedback I got was that everyone found the “primer” useful. I think I was able to start some interesting discussions, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with in the weeks ahead.

What I hope they took away from our chat was the following:

  • Links are important! I’d rather see a link than “coming up at 6” and I think most others on Twitter would also.
  • You’ve got to be willing to experiment. Some things will work, others won’t.
  • Twitter will not replace the TV or website, it is simply another tool. If used correctly, it can compliment CTV’s other channels.
  • Twitter is about people and relationships. You’ve got to show that there are humans behind the Twitter accounts! Be personable.

Those points are valid for any business on Twitter of course, not just for CTV.

Thanks to Carrie Doll and her team for the opportunity to discuss my favorite topic! I think it’s great that CTV Edmonton is so keen to utilize Twitter. Exciting times ahead!

To follow CTV on Twitter: @ctvedmonton, @carriedoll, @darylmcintyre, @joshclassen, @JoelGotlib, @robbywilliams, @ErinIsfeld, @davidjamesgreen, @crnkylttlmnky