Media Monday Edmonton: Update #34

Here is my latest update on local media stuff:

As I posted in an update to last week’s post, Brittney Le Blanc is the new page six columnist at the Edmonton Sun! Here’s her first column, on Twitter. Her latest takes a look at the politics of tweeting.
Some very good news for Global in Alberta – Karen Unland is quarterbacking the upcoming provincial election coverage for both Global Edmonton and Global Calgary!
Speaking of Global Edmonton, they’re looking for three “enthusiastic” Morning News viewers to join the political panel as part of their election coverage. The deadline to apply is Friday, March 23 at 4pm. Rules and regulations are here.
Avenue Edmonton profiles Rick Harp, host of Edmonton AM on CBC. He has been a great addition to the local media scene!
Have a passion for public affairs and news programming? CJSR is hiring a news coordinator! The deadline to apply is April 2.
CTV Edmonton has received a RTDNA award for its coverage of the Slave Lake wildfires last May.
Do you think we should save Edmonton’s paperboy shacks? I had no idea these existed: “The shacks were officially called “district offices” and were an essential part of The Journal’s home delivery system starting in 1913 with seven paperboys. The boys would go to the shacks right after school and wait for the delivery truck to arrive with that day’s edition.”
I’m really liking the new clean design for The Unknown Studio!
GigCity covers Story Engine, the new venture from Todd Babiak and Shawn Ohler.
Recent tweets from some local sports journalists caught the eye of the Calgary Herald!
For the last week, the Edmonton Journal has been featuring mastheads of the past, such as the big yellow box. Tomorrow they launch a redesigned look and content changes.
The Edmonton Commons is looking for “official” commenters, people who are willing to take the time to comment with their real names.
Mike Daisey has been making news around the world with his bold lies about the state of Apple’s factories in China. There has been some excellent discussion about journalism and truth as a result.
Is anyone surprised by this anymore? “In the poorest showing since 1984, advertising revenues at newspapers last year fell 7.3% to $23.9 billion, according to figures quietly published Wednesday by the Newspaper Association of America.”
The big news here in Canada this week was Bell Canada’s decision to purchase Astral Media for $3.38 billion. The three local radio stations impacted are The Bear 100.3 FM, Virgin Radio 104.9 FM and Team 1260 AM.
To finish off this week, here is Todd Babiak’s TEDxEdmonton talk on story:

You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

Edmonton Notes for 3/18/2012

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

The TELUS World of Science is getting a new $7 million, 16,000 square foot gallery that is expected to open in mid-September, just in time to host the acclaimed “STAR WARS Identities” exhibit beginning October 27. While the expansion is welcome news, it’s definitely no TELUS Spark.
This weekend was the grand opening of the Arctic Shores exhibit at the Edmonton Valley Zoo. The $16.7 million project is the first of many that will transform the zoo. I did a photo tour of the construction last April – can’t wait to check out the finished product!
Another exciting project officially opened this week – the newly renovated Commonwealth Community Recreation Centre is now open to the public. It looks amazing!
Alberta Municipal Affairs has approved a $250,000 grant towards the Northwest LRT Concept Plan Study which will look at developing an extension from NAIT to a future transit centre in St. Albert. The $1.1 million study is expected to be completed by December.
The new Edmonton Filmed Entertainment Fund launched this week. The profit-motivated $10 million fund will invest in film and television projects made in and around Edmonton, and is a partnership between EEDC and Los Angeles-based Kilburn Media.
Starting tomorrow a two block section of 105 Street between 105 Avenue and 107 Avenue will be closed until November to facilitate construction of the North LRT to NAIT.
Councillor Anderson thinks that taxpayers are in for a rough ride in the years ahead. He’s concerned that civic taxes could go up more than 50% in the next decade.
You’ve really got to see the picture of the snow piles in this article. Last year’s was nearly 20 stories high, this year’s is much, much smaller. Bring on spring!
Representatives from twelve Ukrainian cities were in Edmonton last week to learn about economic planning, intergovernmental cooperation, and government reform. The trip was part of FCM’s Municipal Local Economic Development program.
According to new figures released by Statistics Canada, total employment in the Edmonton CMA has slipped by over 4000 jobs in February, bringing the unemployment rate to 5.3%.
On the other hand, the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey says that 28% of employers plan to hire for the upcoming quarter while just 11% anticipated cutbacks.
Some sad news in the local food scene: d’Lish is closing permanently. That follows the news that Kerstin’s Chocolates is also closing. For more local food news, don’t miss Sharon’s weekly food notes.
I’m gonna have to head out to Donnan Park to check out Edmonton’s first “natural playground”. The new playground was designed by Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds and features rocks, stick, sand and dirt rather than monkey bars and plastic play structures.
Here’s some excellent news for downtown and hopefully also for Rapid Fire Theatre – our city’s longest running improv group is moving back downtown, into the Citadel’s Zeidler Hall in September.
If you haven’t already done so, check out Backup Box. Created by Eric Warnke and Mark Fossen, the utility helps you connect technologies like FTP and Dropbox. I love the message in the footer: Proudly made in Edmonton.

Photo by Paula Kirman

Here are some upcoming events to note:

The next EBL Edmonton event takes place tomorrow night at Accent Lounge. The guest speaker is Ron Gilbertson, currently EEDC’s President & CEO.
On Tuesday evening the monthly Ruby Meetup is taking place at the Computing Sciences Centre at the University of Alberta.
The 18th DemoCamp Edmonton is taking place on Wednesday evening at the Telus Centre. Come see what Edmonton’s entrepreneurs and tech community has been up to!
BUILDEX Edmonton is at the Shaw Conference Centre on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.
There are two Southeast to West LRT Community Conversations taking place this week. On Tuesday, the Argyll Road to Strathearn area will be discussed at St. James School, and on Thursday the Mill Woods Town Centre to Whitemud Drive area will be discussed at the South Edmonton Alliance Church.
Jason Kapalka, Chief Creative Officer of PopCap Games, is the next speaker in the Innovative Leaders Lecture Series. He’ll be at the U of A on Thursday afternoon to talk about his experience.
Also Thursday afternoon is Jennifer Cockrall-King’s Food and the City event at Hardware Grill.
The Home & Garden Show takes place at the Edmonton Expo Centre starting Thursday.
Don’t miss this on Saturday: Bust a Move Edmonton!
On Saturday evening, head down to Rexall Place to cheer on the Edmonton Rush as they host the Washington Stealth.

Photo by Ian McKenzie

I hope you had a safe and enjoyable St. Patrick’s Day!

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #33

Here is my latest update on local media stuff:

I was very pleased to see some coverage in the Journal for the Prairie Belles Podcast! The duo behind the podcast, Daneel Irons and Lisa Nicole Grace, celebrated two years of recording this weekend – congrats!
The Canadian Music & Broadcast Industry Awards are coming up next week, and Edmonton is well-represented. Virgin’s Lochlin Cross and Sonic’s Adam Thompson are both nominated for Music Director of the Year, Sonic’s Garner Andrews is nominated for On Air Talent, and Sonic’s Al Ford and The Bear’s Rob Vavrek are nominated for Program Director of the Year. Also, Virgin, Now, K97, CISN, World FM, 630 CHED, The Bear, and Sonic are up for various Station of the Year awards.
The Edmonton Journal has received two 2011 National Newspaper Award nominations. Sheila Pratt was recognized for “her investigation of the climate of fear and intimidation in Alberta’s public life” and a team of reporters, editors and photographers were recognized for their coverage of the devastating Slave Like wildfires.
The Journal and the Calgary Herald are also up for a joint International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA) Award for the 2012 World Junior Hockey Championships.
This is really cool, congratulations Karen! “After a successful pilot project that brought 235 students from nine different classes into the media lab over the past few months, The Journal is ready to create a full-fledged site-based school program for the 2012-13 school year.”
Last night was the final broadcast at CTV Edmonton for Scott Roberts – he has accepted a position at CTV British Columbia. Best of luck!
Purchasing a copy of The Journal got a bit more expensive this month. On March 1, the price of a single copy of The Journal rose by 25 cents for the Sunday through Thursday editions.
I love this photo from Fish: two hearts beat as one.
Here’s another photo, courtesy of Brittney: the “party” lights at CHED!
Check out scenes from the March 5 celebration of Avenue’s annual food issue.
Did anyone join West Edmonton Local in capturing a day in the life of west Edmonton today? I can’t wait to see what they came up with.
The Journal has a new blog – Fight Game is a boxing blog written by Warren Tasker. Is boxing really that big of a deal in Edmonton?
Ah, the joy of digging through your blog stats. Heeelloooooooooo Latvia!!!!
Quick reminder that DemoCamp Edmonton 18 takes place next Wednesday – hope to see you there!
Also, early heads up about the Best of Analytics conference on Big Data and the Cloud coming up at the end of April.

You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

UPDATE: Brittney is going to be writing a regular page six column in the Edmonton Sun! From her Tumblr: “I’m joining the likes of Graham Hicks, Danny Hooper, and Marty Forbes. I don’t know which one of us has the best hair – probably Marty.” Congrats Brit! Check out her first column here.

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere 2011 – Users & Clients

This is the second part in my State of the Edmonton Twittersphere for 2011 – you can read the overview post here. As we saw in that entry, more than 46,000 local users posted at least one tweet in 2011, and more than 23,000 were active in December. Let’s take a closer look at users and the tools they used to post tweets.

In my experience the creation date for a user is not always populated, but assuming it is incorrect or missing equally across the year, this chart gives us an indication of when local users signed up for accounts in 2011:

As you can see only March seems to stand out – the number of users created is otherwise fairly evenly distributed across the year.

On to the lists!

Here are the 25 most followed users:

The average local user has 138 followers (compared to 120 last year). A total of 918 users have 1000 followers or more (compared to 420 users last year).

Here are the 25 most listed users:

The average local user has been listed 4 times (compared to 5 times last year).

Here are the 25 most active users:

Here are the 5 most active bots:

Combined those were the top 30 most active users, and they accounted for 8.3% of all local tweets. The top 100 most active users accounted for 16.0% of all local tweets (compared to 18.5% last year).

Here are the 25 most active users using #yeg (and #yeg-related hashtags):

Here are 5 most active bots using #yeg:

The top 100 most active users using #yeg and related tags accounted for 30.3% of all #yeg-tagged tweets, down from 51.8% last year. That suggests that more users are using #yeg! A total of 14,238 users posted at least one tweet tagged with #yeg or a related tag in 2011.

Here are the 25 most replied to users (by other local users):

Those 25 users accounted for 11.2% of all local replies. The top 100 most replied to local users accounted for 24.5% of all local replies (compared to 32.8% last year).

Here are the 25 most retweeted users (by other local users):

If you ever needed proof that Edmonton is a hockey town, look no further than that list! A total of 38 users were retweeted by other local users 1000 times or more. Just the top 6 users were retweeted more than 4000 times, and just @edmontonjournal was retweeted more than 10,000 times.

I like to say that the “most retweeted” is the most important of all the lists in this post, because the retweet is the social currency of Twitter. If someone retweets you, that means that whatever you posted was important/clever/funny/inspiring/etc enough to share with others.

Clients

More than 3100 different applications and services were used to post tweets in 2011, up from more than 2000 last year. Here are the top ten:

The top ten clients accounted for 76.8% of all local tweets in 2011 (compared to 76.2% last year).

Coming Up

This year I have broken the report into sections:

If you have suggestions for additional parts to the report, I’d love to hear them. Thanks for reading!

It’s time to stop investing in Edmonton Stories

Nearly three years ago the City of Edmonton launched Edmonton Stories, a new approach to marketing Edmonton. The project will be discussed by Executive Committee tomorrow, and at least one Councillor has been quite vocal about his desire to shut it down. Councillor Diotte wrote about the issue yesterday on his blog:

I argue we have no performance measures for the website. Social media gurus tell me the costs surrounding Edmontonstories are astronomically high and we can’t even gauge if it alone has drawn a single person to come live in this city.

I don’t always agree with Councillor Diotte, but in this case I think he’s right – it is time to very seriously ask if continuing to put resources into Edmonton Stories is the right thing to do. I first raised questions about the value we’re getting back in September 2009, and followed up with then Communications Branch Manager Mary Pat Barry in February 2010. My conclusion at the time was that while the cost was high, the site was starting to deliver results. The case study that was created in conjunction with the Edmonton Police Service was a really positive step.

Now, two years later, where are we? Not much further ahead. Here’s the sad reality:

In its first four months, EdmontonStories.ca attracted 113,979 total visits. Five months later, that number had grown to 203,685. And in the two years since, it has attracted just 358,691 more visits, bringing the total to 558,376. Most of the growth took place in the first year! Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a graph to show you what the growth curve looks like (linear and logarithmic):

And remember that those numbers are total visits. There’s no word on how many are uniques. The number of people visiting from outside Edmonton is even less, especially when you consider that when an Edmontonian’s story goes up they likely share it with friends and family in the city.
The number of stories on the site likewise has grown very slowly. The total now sits at 339 compared to 272 in February 2010.
The same case study that was held up in defense of the site two years ago is the one Administration is using now (the EPS one). The report mentions just six organizations that have joined the Recruitment Campaign Partnership. Six! Out of all the organizations in Edmonton!
And yes, the budget is a concern. Incredibly, the report does not make it clear how much has been spent on the project. It does state that $1.5 million was allocated in the first year and that a consultant’s estimate of the “right” investment amount was about $5 million. Councillor Diotte says that with this year’s $600,000 budget factored in, a total of $3.5 million will have been spent on the site since it launched.
Worse than the overall budget however is the breakdown. UPDATE: The numbers have now been posted at EdmontonStories.ca. Here’s the split identified for the 2012 budget:

So, let me get this straight:

$180,000 is being spent to advertise the website to extend its reach, yet we know that the growth rate has declined significantly over time.
$144,000 is being spent on the recruitment program, which has attracted just seven partner organizations in the last two years.
$126,000 is being spent on “managing, maintaining, monitoring and engaging target audiences of various social media platforms.” You know, the stuff you and I do every day for free.
$54,000 is being spent on “research, planning & development.” I’m not exactly sure what this would refer to in the third year of a program like this.
$54,000 is being spent on “website development & maintenance.” I pay $90 per month total to host this site and at least half a dozen others on Amazon EC2. And I can confirm that it more than handles the kind of traffic EdmontonStories.ca has.
$30,000 is being spent to extend the brand into trade shows and other events.
$12,000 is being spent to help people write new stories, yet just 67 new stories have been posted in the last two years.

Clearly the cost is a concern. But perhaps the biggest problem is that the site’s champion is no longer driving the site forward. I don’t think it is a coincidence that after Mary Pat left the City the site received less attention. Reading the report from Administration, it certainly feels like there’s a gap from 2010 until now. It’s hard to look after someone else’s baby.

I recognize that you don’t get results over night and that developing a successful program can often take time. But three years should be enough time to decide whether or not to pull the plug. That’s an eternity in the online world! Incredibly, Administration thinks we should do the opposite by reaching out to more organizations, recruiting student partners, and enhancing the site with things like Google Maps.

I think there’s value in what has been created at EdmontonStories.ca and I believe there are ways to continue to leverage that (perhaps via EEDC, which always did seem like a more suitable home for it), but I don’t think the City should be investing any more into the project.

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #32

Here is my latest update on local media stuff:

The Corus Radio Group was able to raise $1.24 million in last week’s Stollery Children’s Hospital Radiothon. Marty Forbes has that plus a ton of other local radio news in his Sunday column. He notes the surprise announcement that Doug Rutherford is stepping down from Corus at the end of March.
BlogWest kicks off on Thursday! More than 200 bloggers from across Western Canada are slated to attend. Follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #blogwest.
Global Edmonton’s Julie Matthews was among the eight Albertans recognized as consumer champions for their work in protecting consumers in 2011. The story she won the Award of Merit for? Julie investigated online romance scams and posed as a potential love interest to expose a romance scam artist! Here is Global’s story about the news.
Here is Alex Abboud’s latest post as blogger-in-residence at The Journal. He got to sit in on an editorial board meeting with Raj Sherman.
Elise Stolte is looking for feedback on The Quarters project as she explores the topic. There’s a related assignment up on The Bridge too.
Nominations for the 30th annual Western Magazine Awards have been extended until March 16. The awards ceremony will be held in Vancouver on June 15.
To celebrate its 30th anniversary, FAVA is hosting FAVA Fest from March 20-24 and will holding an awards gala as well to recognize outstanding documentaries, music videos, and more. Five awards of excellence and three production grant awards will be presented on the 24th!
The Alberta Media Production Industries Association (AMPIA) and Crossroads Television Systems (CTS) have launched a new mentorship program for individuals to receive hands-on training experience in film and television production. The deadline for applications for the new program is March 30.
As I mentioned previously, Laurie Callsen will soon be joining Metro Edmonton. Here’s her farewell column for the Camrose Canadian.
Calgary native Pat Kiernan, who was previously a reporter at CTV Edmonton, is apparently keen to replace Regis Philbin on Live with Regis and Kelly.
Here’s a bit of history for you – 48 years ago today fish & chips were just 40 cents per order at A&W Drive Ins! There were also stories on the new downtown library, and the last remaining outhouses in the city.
The March issue of Boyle McCauley News is now online!
I haven’t found much use for Pinterest yet (mind you I haven’t given it a chance really) but dozens of other Edmontonians have (such as the City itself). I took a look, and it turns out there are a few media organizations on it as well! There’s a quarterly magazine called Urban Infant that has a page, Global Edmonton has a page, and both the Edmonton Journal (launched on January 26) and The Bridge have pages. There are a few journalists with their own pages as well, such as Liane Faulder. Will be interesting to see how use of Pinterest evolves locally!
Avenue Edmonton celebrated the launch of its annual food issue this evening! In addition to the 25 Best Things to Eat they have a new list for 2012, Edmonton’s Best Restaurants. Corso 32 was named Best Restaurant, while Tres Carnales was named Best New Restaurant.

You can see the rest of my photos from the party here.

You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

Edmonton Notes for 3/4/2012

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

City Council’s annual budget and year-end expenditure reports were released on Friday. Council budgeted $1,263,865 in 2011 and actually spent $1,118,682.
Council is considering a new bylaw that would ban smoking within 10 metres of any outdoor playground, skating rink, sports field, or spray park. Similar legislation exists elsewhere. If passed, the new bylaw could take effect as early as next month.
Monday is the deadline for nominations for the next Historian Laureate. Ken Tingley’s two year term ends in April.
Congratulations to FiliStix, Tres Carnales, Cake Couture, and Guru – the folks behind those organizations made Western Living Magazine’s list of the 40 Top Foodies Under 40 for 2012! Great to see Edmonton represented.
I certainly wouldn’t be handing out any awards until the project is finished, but the City has received an Award of Merit from the Consulting Engineers of Alberta for the North LRT to NAIT project. UPDATE: To be clear, the award was for the LRT tunnel under the new EPCOR Tower, taking advantage of that building’s construction, which makes sense.
Did you know Edmonton still had a milkman? Barry Svederus was the last milkman in Edmonton until he retired on Friday, a job he has been doing for 34 years!
The City of Edmonton is accepting applications for the position of firefighter until March 30.
The list of nominees for the Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts was announced this week! Should be a great event.
Congratulations to Sam Pillar, Forrest Zeisler and the rest of the team at Jobber – they just scored a six-figure venture capital investment!
Another year, another uneventful NHL trade deadline. Check out the analysis at OilersNation.
Work is well underway for a new stormwater line in The Quarters. Cool photo of the giant hole crews dug – six stories deep!
Four Edmonton schools made the Fraser Institute’s top 10 schools for 2012. You can check out the full list here.
Police handed out 379 distracted driving tickets in February, the most since the legislation took effect in September.
It sounds like Council will be discussing the Edmonton Stories website this week – Councillor Diotte wants to see the program shut down.
Here are some recent business comings and goings from Bill Mah.
In case you missed it, here’s the first part of my State of the Edmonton Twittersphere for 2011.

Big snowflakes fell in Edmonton today, but with warm temperatures ahead, it won’t last! Here you can see the Jaffer Building signage going up. You can see the finished product here.

Here are some upcoming events to note:

The Innovative Leaders Lecture Series continues on Tuesday with TELUS CEO Darren Entwistle.
Yelp’s Prohibition Party takes place on Wednesday at Suede. Should be a fun way to mark the one year anniversary of Yelp in Edmonton!
March 8 is International Women’s Day, and there are a bunch of events taking place around the city to mark the occasion. The annual Key Communicators Luncheon takes place at the Sutton Place, and there’s a wine & cheese celebration at NorQuest.
BlogWest gets underway on Thursday and runs through Saturday at the Delta Edmonton Centre Suite.
The Seniors Association of Greater Edmonton is holding an open house on Thursday afternoon.
The Oilers host the Canadiens on Thursday evening at Rexall Place.
The high-flying Oil Kings will go for six wins in a row on Wednesday as they host Moose Jaw. On Saturday they host Red Deer at Rexall Place.
The Edmonton Rush are back in action at home on Friday evening when they’ll take on Calgary!
You can take part in the International Women’s Day March on Saturday at Tipton Park. Or, check out the Women’s Wellness Fair at the Alberta Avenue Community Centre.
The City of Edmonton is holding a Neighbourhood Engagement Workshop all day Saturday at the Santa Maria Goretti Centre.
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere 2011 – Overview

Welcome to the State of the Edmonton Twittersphere for 2011, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton in 2011. You can see my 2010 recap here, and my 2009 recap here.

I’ve done my best to ensure all of the data in this report is accurate, but I make no guarantees – use it at your own risk. The data comes from the Twitter API, and was collected over the course of 2011. 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, and thus a “local user”.

Please treat the numbers in this report as a minimum. There are instances where I wasn’t able to capture all of the data, and there are certainly users here in Edmonton who do not match the above definition of a “local user”. More important than the raw numbers themselves are the trends, and that’s why in many cases I have presented rounded rather than exact figures. You can click on any graph to see a larger version.

Here are the highlights for 2011:

More than 46,000 local users posted at least one tweet.
- A little over 1000 of those accounts no longer exist.
More than 11.2 million tweets were posted by local users, which works out to 21.4 tweets per minute.
- That’s 2.3 times as many tweets as were posted in 2010.
Here’s a breakdown of those tweets:
- More than 715,000 tweets were tagged #yeg or a related hashtag (like #yegfood) (6.4%, down from 7.7% last year)
- Nearly 700,000 tweets were retweets (6.2%, down from 7.2% last year)
- More than 4.4 million tweets were replies (39.4%, up from 34.7% last year)
- More than 1.7 million tweets were replies to other local users (15.2%, up from 13.5% last year)
- More than 2.5 million tweets contained links (22.9%, down from 26.9% last year)
- More than 320,000 tweets were twooshes (a twoosh is exactly 140 characters) (2.9%, down from 3.9% last year)

While more than 46,000 local users posted a tweet last year, just under 24,000 were active at the end of the year in December (active means they posted at least one tweet). That’s 1.9 times as many active users as January. That’s slightly better growth than we saw in 2010, when December had 1.8 times as many active users as January.

When the year started, Edmontonians were posting a little over 600,000 tweets per month. By the end of the year, that number had nearly doubled to 1.1 million tweets per month. That’s less than the growth that Twitter as a whole experienced last year (3 times as many tweets were posted as compared to the same point in 2010) but is more or less what we saw in Edmonton in 2010 (as compared to 2009).

Roughly 49.1% of all tweets in 2011 were posted between the hours of 9 AM and 6 PM, down slightly from 50.8% in 2010. Once again the lowest point for tweet volume was around 4 AM. Last year there were clear early morning and late night spikes, but this year only the late night spike is present (8 PM to 11 PM).

There’s a much nicer looking curve for days of the week this year, with the most tweets being posted during the middle of the week. Sunday typically had the lowest volume of tweets posted.

Here’s a look at the number of tweets posted per day for each day of the year. As with last year’s chart, the trend is clearly up, and there are some visible spikes and troughs. The dip on April 9 appears to be an anomaly in the data, perhaps there were issues with the Twitter API that day (unless you have another idea!). The peak on June 15 was not immediately obvious but it turned out after looking at a Wordle of the tweets that the spike was due to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. With nearly 45,000 tweets posted that day, it remained the record until October 25 when discussion about the downtown arena became the talk of Twitter here in Edmonton. More than 46,000 tweets were posted that day, with almost as many being posted on the next two days as well. The spike on November 17 appears to be related to the snow and cold weather that arrived that week.

Coming Up

In order to make it easier for me to write this report, I have decided to break it into sections. This entry provided an overview, and upcoming entries will focus on different aspects of Twitter usage in Edmonton:

If you have suggestions for additional parts to the report, I’d love to hear them. Thanks for reading!

Media Monday Edmonton: Update #31

Here is my latest update on local media stuff:

Most awesome story of the week? The Oilers signed Hemsky to a $10 million, two-year deal, prompting someone with control of the Calgary Flames account on Twitter to post: “$10 million over two years for Hemsky is the funnist thing I’ve heard in a long, long time. I hope it happens. #whatajoke.”
Here is Karen’s latest Edmonton New Media Roundup. She wrote about MediaCamp, as well as a bunch of other cool things happening in the community. We had a dinner with the MediaCamp organizers on Friday, the first step toward answering the question, “what next?”
It looks like retirement isn’t for Graham Hicks, because in addition to writing restaurant reviews he is now also going to be writing a weekly business column called Hicks on Biz. Looking forward to it!
Murray Blakely is one of this year’s RTNDA Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients. He spent 42 years in the media, including 38 in radio and television and 26 as a traffic reporter. He was among those covering the 1987 Edmonton tornado. He retired in 1996.
Brittney has the scoop on two new members of the iNews880 team!
Alex Abboud posted an interesting entry a couple weeks ago at the Community Newsroom blog. He shared some observations from his first few weeks as the Journal’s blogger-in-residence.
91.7 The Bounce is celebrating its 7th birthday this year. The bash is scheduled for March 22 and features Pitbull and Flo Rida.
Global Edmonton’s Laurel Clark is among the journalists traveling to Africa as part of the joint Shaw Africa Project between Global News and Journalists for Human Rights (JHR). She’ll be in Liberia! Here’s a tweet of support from Vassy Kapelos.
Program director Russell James is returning to The Bounce, the station he left in 2009 when Hot 107 was launched.
Last week the CRTC approved a new FM station in Leduc. 93.1 The One FM will play the hits of the 80s, 90s, and today. You know, like every other station.
Jasmine Franklin, who recently launched her own media business, has joined Councillor Kerry Diotte’s office as a communications/research coordinator.
Congratulations to Dana DiTomaso who is CBC Edmonton’s new technology columnist! You can hear her every Monday morning on the radio.
Laurie Callsen starts as Metro Edmonton’s new digital reporter on March 18. It’ll be great to have Laurie back in Edmonton!
Here’s a sports post for you, over at mc79hockey.com: Stories the EDM media won’t tell, Vol. MX.
The deadline for applications for the 2012 Greg Clark Award is March 16. Last year’s winner, Marion Warnica, recently joined CBC Edmonton.
It looks like this video showcasing Edmonton as a great location to film horror movies and television was posted in October, but I just came across it recently:

You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.

So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!

You can see past Media Monday Edmonton entries here.

Edmonton Notes for 2/26/2012

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Winter is back! Apparently more snow fell in the last 24 hours than has fallen all season long! A parking ban has been declared – all vehicles must be removed from residential bus routes by 7 AM.
All of that snow made illumiNITE even better though. The event featured a number of temporary light sculptures in the Alley of Light on 104 Street. Check out Stu’s blog post for more.
If you zoom in on West Edmonton Mall using Google Maps on your Android device, you’ll now be able to see a detailed floor plan and can navigate your way through the gigantic mall. WEM is the first Canadian venue to partner with Google on supporting indoor places on Google Maps.
There will be no Capitals baseball at Telus Field this year, as the team withdrew from the North American League this week citing the plummeting participation of other teams. So, what are we going to use Telus Field for? Here’s one idea – a 100 team slow-pitch tournament.
Here’s a wonderful profile of everyone’s favorite LRT driver, Tim Mireault. You know, the airline pilot driver!
Edmonton and Kamloops are finalists to host the 2015 Panamerican Junior Athletics Championships, and will face off in May to determine who wins.
The Frequency rave party took place last weekend at the Shaw Conference Centre, the first test of Council’s recent demand that such events curb alcohol and drug abuse.
Have you noticed your bus ride is a little full? ETS is dealing with some overcrowded routes.
It’s amazing to me that police received 41 calls last year about over-sized vehicles causing backups at or near the High Level Bridge.
I guess it had to happen sooner or later – Edmonton’s first homicide of 2012.
There’s $10,000 on the table for an Edmonton film-maker! The deadline for submissions for the inaugural Edmonton Film Prize is March 30.
I love this Edmonton pride – you can get an “e-town” baseball cap at Foosh!
The Edmonton Eskimos reported a net profit of $473,471 in 2011 and are confident that the loss of Ricky Ray won’t hurt them financially.
Moving slowly ahead on the southeast LRT, but how to pay for it?
What do you think, is the Talus Dome located in the right place? I agree that it’s interesting to see how many Edmontonians are interested in debating the issue.

Though I’m sure you’ve seen it by now, the Shit Edmontonians Say video was the talk of town this week so I’ve got to include it here:

Little heavy on the hockey, but I guess that is an accurate portrayal of Edmonton!

February; out like a lion by oudzo

Here are some upcoming events:

The inaugural First Nations Conference on Sustainable Buildings & Communities takes place at the River Cree starting Wednesday.
Feminist Edmonton presents Feminism Week, starting March 1. Learn more here!
The Oilers have two home games this week, on Wednesday against St. Louis and on Friday against Dallas.
The Oil Kings also have a pair of home games, hosting Swift Current on Saturday and Saskatoon on Sunday.
The Jam Union Art House Party & NextGen Social takes place on Thursday evening at the Artery.
Downtown Dining Week starts March 2!
Early heads up that there is a good old fashioned #yegtweetup scheduled for March 10!
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

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