State of the Calgary Twittersphere – August 2009

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

The source of the data this month is the same as last, primarily Twitter Search but also from Twitter directly. If a user has his or her location set to Calgary, Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, Strathmore, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered a Calgarian. If a tweet is “about Calgary” it contains either the word Calgary, the #yyc hashtag, or both.

For August 2009:

# of local users: 6852 (an increase of 226 from July)

To clarify, that means there were 6852 users who posted at least one tweet in August 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

Here are the rest of the stats for August 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 244330
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 5463 (2.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 75678 (31.0%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 67295 (27.5%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 9466 (3.9%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 6945 (2.8%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates. UberTwitter doesn’t seem to be as popular in Calgary as it is in Edmonton:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

The ten most active local users (most tweets first): kairocanuck, OpenlistCalgary, Kmcdancer123, ProtruckR, ShadderdGlass, gotkube, CdnCowgirl, ThankASoldier, workmanrw, nicolemarr, youthjuice1111 (I put 11 here because OpenlistCalgary is clearly a bot)
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): nscafe, gotkube, C_DIG, PeaceBridgeCGY, jayincalgary, CdnCowgirl, kiambas, djkelly, jonincalgary, darylcognito
Just under 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 5.5 tweets per minute in August, compared with 5.3 per minute in July.
The day with the most local tweets posted was August 21st at 9521. On average, 7881 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 7694 in July).
Of the 75678 replies posted by local users this month, 20804 or 27.5% were to other local users.
A total of 952 users posted 50 times or more in August. In comparison, 1308 users posted just once.

Final Thoughts

Like the Edmonton numbers, growth in August for Calgary was minimal. It’s the summer, after all! I suspect that growth in September will be higher.

Since March, I have identified just over 13,500 local users. The number above, 6852, is how many of them were active in August.

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – August 2009

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

The source of the data this month is the same as last, primarily Twitter Search but also from Twitter directly. 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.

For August 2009:

# of local users: 5365 (an increase of 232 from July)

To clarify, that means there were 5365 users who posted at least one tweet in August 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.

Here are the rest of the stats for August 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 206318
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 12808 (6.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 72060 (34.9%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 41015 (19.9%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 9947 (4.8%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 6828 (3.3%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates. I’m pretty impressed by the rise of UberTwitter:

And by popular demand, a new stat this month! Here are the number of local users by community (besides Edmonton itself) for August:

Keep in mind that is based entirely on the text inside the location field of the user’s profile, and is definitely a minimum. Still, gives you an idea of the breakdown.

Some other interesting stats for the month:

The ten most active local users (most tweets first): bevurlee, AndyGroenink, GeneralTekno, talhaz, rubixcubeman, iRAMMEENN, angelzilla, lessthanfive, HowardJaymes, paulagroenink
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): bevurlee, britl, angelzilla, lessthanfive, ZoomJer, garrymullen, Sirthinks, adampatterson, bingofuel, stygldpnyby
Nearly 51% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 4.6 tweets per minute in August, compared with 4.7 per minute in July.
The day with the most local tweets posted was August 19th at 8185. On average, 6655 tweets were posted each day (compared with 6780 in July).
Of the 72060 replies posted by local users this month, 26924 or 37.3% were to other local users.
A total of 890 local users posted 50 times or more this month. In comparison, 997 local users posted just once this month.

Final Thoughts

A little bit of growth this month, but not much. It’s the summer, after all! Hopefully that means everyone was outside enjoying everything Edmonton has to offer. Growth in September should be higher.

Since January, I have identified just over 10,400 local users. The number above, 5365, is how many of them were active in August.

I’ll have the Calgary stats posted in the next couple of days!

Twestival Local 2009 – September 10th in Edmonton

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re holding Twestival Local here in Edmonton next week (get your tickets here). After an online vote, it was decided that the local cause we’ll be supporting is the Youth Emergency Shelter Society. I’m very excited about this, and they are too! Here’s a brief into to YESS:

In 1978, a group of concerned individuals discovered a gap in our social services system. Essentially, there were no programs in place to assist homeless children between the ages of 16 and 18. In response to this lack of service, the group activated the Youth Emergency Shelter Society (Y.E.S.S.) in September 1981, offering services in a reclaimed fire hall building on Whyte Avenue.

In 2004, based on extensive research into the challenges and issues faced by homeless youth in our community, Y.E.S.S. conducted a major restructuring of all programs. We are now serving youth at risk more efficiently and effectively than ever!

And a little on why they need our help:

YESS relies on fundraising for more than 50% of our budget each year. We face the ongoing challenge of raising more money to provide services to Edmonton’s growing population of troubled teens. You are a critical part of our ability to continue to develop our programs.

For more, check out their Summer 2009 “Eye on Youth” newsletter in PDF.

Very soon, YESS is opening a new facility called the Armoury Youth Centre. They responded to the City’s RFP for the Connaught Armoury space just north of Whyte Avenue and were chosen as the organization whose proposed program would have the greatest positive impact on the community.

A couple weeks after Twestival, you can check out the new Armoury Youth Centre for yourself! Here are the details:

September 26 & 27

Pancake Breakfast from 8am to 10:30am
Tours from 9am to 4:30pm
Afternoon BBQ!

10310 85 Avenue
Edmonton, AB

You can download the grand opening invite in PDF here.

Twestival Local takes place on Thursday. Here are the details:

WHAT: Twestival Local 2009
WHEN: Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 6:00pm
WHERE: Original Joe’s Varsity Row, 8404 109 Street, Edmonton, AB (map)
WHY: To support the Youth Emergency Shelter Society

We’re asking for a minimum donation of $20, but feel free to donate more! You can get tickets online here. Please spread the word!

See you there!

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – July 2009

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

Apologies for the delay in getting this one posted. The source of the data this month has changed, slightly. In addition to Twitter Search, I added more data directly from Twitter itself. A total of 16,082 tweets were pulled from user timelines directly because they did not exist in Twitter Search.

User identification remains the same. If a user has his or her location set to Calgary, Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, Strathmore, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered a Calgarian. If a tweet is “about Calgary” it contains either the word Calgary, the #yyc hashtag, or both.

For July 2009:

# of local users: 6626 (an increase of 980 from June)

To clarify, that means there were 6626 users who posted at least one tweet in July 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

I’m happy with my previous stats posts existing as point-in-time snapshots. That said, I am continually improving my data set, making it more accurate over time. I am still happy with the numbers I posted for March through May – they are reasonably accurate (within about 100 users). The number I posted for June however, 5646 users, is not accurate. It was actually 6506, which means this month actually increased by 120 users (however I left the 980 above for consistency).

Here are the rest of the stats for July 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 238525
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 5028 (2.1%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 72969 (30.6%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 58297 (24.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 7713 (3.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 8159 (3.4%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates. You’ll notice that API is now identified separately from web:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

The ten most active local users (most tweets first): _LikeTheAngel, Kmcdancer123, ThankASoldier, euphoricradio, youthjuice1111, strategicsense, NoOnesInControl, eastonj86, mrrocknroll, jacquelinejane
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): Kmcdancer123, nscafe, C_DIG, NoOnesInControl, _LikeTheAngel, jonincalgary, ChelseySyrnyk, djkelly, CdnCowgirl, carmenincalgary
Just over 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 5.3 tweets per minute in July, compared with 4.8 per minute in June.
The day with the most local tweets posted was July 20th at 8958. On average, 7694 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 6908 in June).
Of the 72969 replies posted by local users this month, 20625 or 28% were to other local users.
A total of 996 users posted 50 times or more in July. In comparison, 1175 users posted just once.

Analysis

There wasn’t much growth in July, which isn’t altogether surprising considering it’s the summer. I suspect things will pick up again in the fall. I’m still fascinated by the difference in tagged tweets between Calgary and Edmonton (you can see Edmonton’s stats for July here).

Since I started recording the stats for Calgary back in March, I have identified just over 12,500 local users. The number above, 6626, is how many of them were active in July.

Twestival Local is happening in Calgary on September 12th! Click here for more info.

TweetSharp for Twitter developers using .NET

Since January I’ve been using a library called TweetSharp in my various Twitter-related programming projects (including my monthly stats posts). Not only has it saved me from all of the effort that would have gone into writing my own Twitter library for .NET, but it has also taught me a few things about fluent interfaces, OAuth, and other topics. Here’s the description from the relatively new official website:

TweetSharp is a complete .NET library for microblogging platforms that allows you to write short and sweet expressions that convert automatically to web queries and fly to Twitter on your behalf.

Maybe this is a generalization but I often feel that .NET developers get the short end of the stick when the “cool kids” release sample code for their APIs. Or more accurately, C# developers get the short end of the stick (because you can run Python, Ruby, and other languages on .NET if you really want to). Thus I’m grateful that Dimebrain (Daniel Crenna) has developed such a useful library.

TweetSharp is open source and under active development (hosted on Google Code), with a growing base of users reporting and fixing issues (I helped with the Twitter Search functionality initially). If you’re writing any kind of software for Twitter using .NET, you should be using TweetSharp.

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – July 2009

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

The source of the data this month has changed, slightly. In addition to Twitter Search, I added more data directly from Twitter itself. A total of 19,199 tweets were pulled from user timelines directly because they did not exist in Twitter Search.

User identification remains the same. 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.

For July 2009:

# of local users: 5133 (an increase of 1491 from June)

To clarify, that means there were 5133 users who posted at least one tweet in July 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.

I’m happy with my previous stats posts existing as point-in-time snapshots. That said, I am continually improving my data set, making it more accurate over time. I am still happy with the numbers I posted for January through May – they are reasonably accurate (within about 100 users). The number I posted for June however, 3642 users, is not accurate. It was actually 4581, which means this month actually increased by 552 users (however I left the 1491 above for consistency).

Here’s a graph to illustrate local user growth in 2009:

Here are the rest of the stats for July 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 210162
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 12879 (6.1%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 73119 (34.8%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 43702 (20.8%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 8393 (4.0%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 7185 (3.4%)

Once again, the number of tweets containing #yeg actually includes all local hashtags, such as #yegtransit or #yegfood (though most often they are used together anyway).

Here are the numbers above in graphic form (not corrected for June):

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates. You’ll notice that API is now identified separately from web:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

The ten most active local users (most tweets first): sspidey, GeneralTekno, donutsmile, FWEE4U, AndyGroenink, paulagroenink, mspixieriot, Cliffshade, britl, lessthanfive.
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): britl, MicheRyder, mastermaq, lessthanfive, bingofuel, JodieGiese, sonic1029, bevurlee, TysonDueck, lyndasteele.
Just over 52% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 4.7 tweets per minute in July, compared with 4.0 per minute in June.
The day with the most local tweets posted was July 22nd at 8110. On average, 6780 tweets were posted each day (compared with 5743 in June).
Of the 73119 replies posted by local users this month, 26860 or 36.7% were to other local users.
A total of 957 local users posted 50 times or more this month. In comparison, 903 local users posted just once this month.

Finally, here are the top ten users in Edmonton by followers (most followers first): Pat_Lorna, revtrev, DrBarryLycka, LesM, subunit1, garrymullen, redneckmommy, mastermaq, NHL_Oilers, dan_cote.

Analysis

Looks like we’re getting some growth again, which is a little surprising considering it’s the summer. A couple of things helped to boost July’s stats, including the City Centre Airport issue and the big summer storms. I counted 1464 tweets posted by local users with the #ecca hashtag in July, and I already posted some stats on the storm here. Additionally, July 8th (which is when the Council meeting on the airport was held) was the second busiest day of the month.

Since January, I have identified just over 9200 local users. The number above, 5133, is how many of them were active in July.

I’ll post the Calgary stats as soon as I can – still some manual processing to do, so it might be next week before I get it all finished.

Twestival Local 2009 in Edmonton

Back in February, the Edmonton Twitter community participated in the first ever Twestival – a tweetup for charity. We raised over $1000 for charity:water, and we had a great time doing so! As a great a cause as that was, I would have preferred to support something local. That’s why I am excited about Twestival Local:

Twestival was born out of the idea that if cities are able to collaborate on an international scale, but work from a local level, it would result in a spectacular impact. While Twestival Global put the spotlight around one cause, Twestival Local is encouraging cities around the world to host events in support of a local cause.

The goal is to give people a chance to feel they are contributing to a larger social initiative, but bring the cause a little closer to home.

So basically Twestival is back, and we’re supporting a local cause this time! Which one? We don’t know – we need your help to decide! You can vote online here.

We’re going to hold our Twestival on September 10, 2009. We haven’t yet decided on a venue, so please add your suggestions for that and anything else to the wiki. Watch @edmontontweetup and the Twestival Edmonton blog for updates.

Twitter promoting Search despite major issues

Yesterday Twitter launched a new home page that puts more emphasis on search and trending topics. There’s a nice big search box on top, with up-to-date, daily, and weekly trends underneath. The aesthetic is different from the rest of the site however (you don’t see any of this if you’re logged in), so don’t be surprised to see additional changes in the coming weeks.

If you enter a query or click on a trending topic, the search results appear below. It looks a lot like Twitter Search. Some of the improvements include a description of what the trending topics are (Hell’s Kitchen was given the description “A reality television cooking competition”) and search tips appear in a little box on the right.

I don’t think the new design should be a surprise to anyone – it has been clear for quite some time that Twitter Search is important.

What’s surprising is that they’re promoting search even though it has major issues:

Stale Results: Twitter itself has become very stable lately, but the same cannot be said for Twitter Search. Results routinely become stale, sometimes for as long as an hour or two (so the newest tweets to show up in the results were posted an hour or two ago). For a real-time search engine, the stale results issue happens surprisingly frequently.
Missing Tweets: Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed that the number of missing tweets has increased (though I think it has always been an intermittent problem). It used to be that I could enter my username and see all replies at Twitter Search, but lately I can’t. Some tweets simply don’t appear in the Twitter Search index. I’ve submitted a support request about this, but have not heard anything back yet.
Other Intermittent Issues: There are a few good reasons that someone might not appear in search results (such as if they have a private account) but lately Twitter has had issues keeping the index up-to-date with new accounts.
Lack of Innovation: With the exception of adding the “source” property to search results, Twitter has done very little to improve the service they purchased a little over a year ago. Real-time search is new and ripe for innovation, but Twitter doesn’t seem interested. One of the oldest quirks is that user IDs returned from Twitter Search don’t match up with user IDs at Twitter itself. This is scheduled to be fixed in the next version of the API, but it’s not clear when that will happen.

Worst of all, Twitter has been terrible at communicating about the above issues. The Twitter Status blog is never updated when search results go stale, and very little has been shared regarding the future direction of Twitter Search.

The good news is that Twitter is finally starting to acknowledge that they need to improve search. Last night, Biz wrote: “We have a lot of work to do when it comes to the quality of our search results and trend analysis…”

Search is vitally important to Twitter, and I want to see them succeed. If they don’t address the above issues however, someone else is going to come along and steal their thunder.

Edmonton Indy Twitter Contest!

If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably come across the Edmonton Stories Twitter Indy Contest. If you’re not, this is as good a reason as any to join! All you have to do is tweet your Edmonton Story and use the #yegmoment hashtag, and you could win a lap around the track!

Two lucky winners will ride with an Indy Racing League licensed driver as they make a lap around the track, experiencing the speed, thrills, turns and straight-aways firsthand. Each winner will also receive a double guest pass to the Edmonton Indy.

Your tweet should describe a moment that captures why Edmonton is special to you and explain what that moment said to you about our city.

You can see an updated list of entries here. Be creative!

I’m writing about this for two reasons. First, because I’m one of the three judges for the contest, along with iNews880’s Brittney Le Blanc and the Edmonton Journal’s Paula Simons. We have the challenge of going through all the tweets to pick two winners! Second, because I think this is a great use of social media. EdmontonStories.ca has been active on Twitter, tweeting about the city and the stories that citizens have submitted. They could easily have stopped there, but they didn’t. That’s what I like about this contest – they found a way to use Twitter effectively for more than just broadcasting.

The deadline to enter is tonight at 11:59 PM MDT. You can enter as many times as you like, so get tweeting! Full rules and regulations are here in PDF. The Rexall Edmonton Indy starts Friday and runs through Sunday.

Good luck!

UPDATE: The winners have been announced! Congrats to @prairiepaperie and @livingsanctuary!

Social Media and the Edmonton Storm

As you probably know, a violent storm passed through Edmonton on Saturday evening, causing lots and lots of damage around the city. Emergency services, Epcor, and the local media all had a very busy weekend, and the cleanup will likely continue for days. Users of Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks also had a busy weekend, posting thousands of first-hand reports as well as dozens of photos and videos online. In this post I recap some of the highlights.

Twitter played a big role in the storm of course, which means that I received a number of phone calls from the local media today. I was interviewed for the evening news on both Global and CBC, and will be on CBC Radio tomorrow morning at 6:15am. Why do they call me? Because I have the data to back up my observations, and now you will too!

From July 18th at noon until July 20th at noon, local users posted 14456 tweets. Of those:

1640 were tagged #yeg, #yegstorm, or #yegweather
462 contained TwitPics
682 were retweets
2024 contained links

To put these numbers into context, I compared them with the average of the three previous weekends:

As you can see, each category was higher than normal. Of particular interest to me, was the number of tagged tweets. During the 48 hours of the storm and aftermath, local users posted 4.3 times as many tagged tweets as they do on a normal weekend. There was a definite spike at the height of the storm:

That got us into the trending topics on Twitter, and spam bots and non-local users helped push up as high as #6:

Photo courtesy of Brittney Le Blanc, iNews880

There was a lot of information being posted on Saturday night, so I decided to aggregate the best of what I saw using CoverItLive. The tool has changed a lot since I last used it, but I got up and running pretty quickly. You can see the stream here. Some stats on the live stream:

283 different people followed along
92 total comments were submitted
259 tweets were aggregated
70 other items were posted (I was listening to the radio and adding extra comments)

One of the people following the live stream was Evan Adnams, who at the time was in North Carolina! He took the information in the live stream and started plotting it on a collaborative Google map that has since been viewed nearly 13,000 times.

I know for a fact that the local media used Evan’s map to find out where they should send their cameras. Users continue to update it too, which is great!

As I mentioned, lots of videos were posted online. This video by Trevor Prentice is probably the most watched of them all, racking up over 30,000 views:

There were also dozens of photos posted (check out galleries at CTV Edmonton and iNews880). This one by Brittney Le Blanc was not only the most retweeted photo during the storm, but it also immediately put to rest rumors that the CN Tower had collapsed:

I think that’s an important point. People often say it’s great that you can post stuff on Twitter in real-time, but who’s going to do the fact checking? The answer, of course, is everyone. Citizens like Jerry Aulenbach, who posted a number of TwitPics, joined forces with members of the mainstream media like Brittney to do the fact checking. Josh Classen and Mike Sobel posted frequent weather updates on Twitter based on the data they had, and citizens augmented that with live reports from all around the city. The Edmonton Journal, which couldn’t publish on Sunday due to power outages, kept its website up-to-date with a combination of articles written by its reporters and links to the social media resources I’ve mentioned above.

It was a truly collaborative effort, and it won’t be the last time we see social and mainstream media teaming up to get the job done.

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