Parnassus Group

What a Half Million Tweets Tell us About the iPad – It Needs a Camera

Steve Broback — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:24:19 +0000

Since we do Tweet analysis for consumer electronics firms, I decided to take a quick look at the hottest product out there at the moment.

Since yesterday, we’ve captured over 500,000 tweets mentioning the iPad. A little linguistic analysis of the 2,200 tweets that contain the word “missing” reveal some commonalities.

If you run these thorough a simple word cloud service and filter out the terms that don’t align (i.e. “Apple” etc.) Here is the result:

Looks like camera, Flash, and USB are the most mentioned deficiencies.

If you sort them by frequency here is how it shakes out:

camera 152
flash 135
usb 80
port 46
video 46
slot 45
sd 44
multitasking 41
card 36
link 30
screen 29
adapters 27
keyboard 24
verizon 23
3g 22

Seattle Tweetup: Celebrating Dom Sagolla’s “140 Characters, A Style Guide for the Short Form”

Steve Broback — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:57:56 +0000

All are invited to join the Twitter Conference gang and Twitter Co-creator (and 140tc speaker) Dom Sagolla in Seattle at 8:15pm on Dec 2nd. We’ll be at Odd Fellows Cafe, located at pine & 10th on Capitol hill.

Dom’s new book, 140 Characters, A Style Guide for the Short Form is out, and we’re celebrating!

Broback will be bringing a couple special bottles of Woodinville Wine. Please join us.

Black Friday: Tweet Sentiment Indicates the Malls Were “Packed”

Steve Broback — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:32:18 +0000

Black Friday: Tweet Sentiment Indicates the Malls Were “Packed”

I decided to suck down all tweets posted today (black friday 2009) containing the string “the mall was.” I then ran these 207 through our Tweet analysis system to prune them down to ones containing references to how crowded the stores were.

The results? 154 tweets that heavily (by almost 80 percent) indicate traffic was heavy this year.

Admittedly, I have not processed the numbers from last year so don’t have a reference point to 2008. Also, the numbers captured are not huge. Nonetheless, few people are tweeting about empty malls.

If you extract the single word that most closely aligns with the level of “crowdedness” and process them as a tag cloud, the result is shown below. Green indicates terms aligned with more crowdedness, red with less.

I decided to capture all tweets posted today (black friday 2009) containing the string “the mall was.” I then ran these 207 through our tweet analysis system to prune them down to ones containing references to how crowded the stores were.

The results? 154 tweets that heavily (by almost 80 percent) indicate traffic was heavy this year.

Admittedly, I have not processed the numbers from last year so don’t have a reference point to 2008. Also, the numbers captured are not huge. Nonetheless, few people are tweeting about empty malls.

Brand Monitoring and Twitter Search: How the Major Engines Come Up Short

Steve Broback — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:49:34 +0000

Brand Monitoring and Twitter Search: How the Major Engines Come Up Short

One of the things we offer clients is reporting on comprehensive historical brand mentions on Twitter. The ability to go back weeks or months can be invaluable, and this is generally something that can’t be done using search.twitter.com.

An example of how mainstream search misses the mark came to me as I tested several popular tools trying to find references to our recent Twitter Conference. Specifically, I was curious about any references made by the retired professional wrestler and actor known as the “Iron Sheik.”

For those of you that were not at our L.A. event, the comedy lunch panel had an unexpected last-minute addition. As our panelists prepared to take the stage, a limo pulled up and out stepped the Iron Sheik and his entourage. Their claim was that the Sheik had been instructed to appear at our event and to join the panel onstage. (The only issue was that as far as we knew the only people who could have made such an instruction was us…)

It was Tucker Max who led us to the solution as he insisted that having the Sheik there was a major coup — and that we simply had to have him join the panel. We did put him onstage, and he was a big hit.

What I’ve been wondering is if the Sheik had posted about the conference prior to the event. Did he “warn” us he would be making a surprise appearance? I decided to see how the big four (and one small) search engines did with an archival search:

Engine 1: Twitter Search

No luck here, zero results for the hashtag #140tc when searching within twitter.com/the_ironsheik. That’s not unexpected, as Twitter’s search archive only goes back a week or two.

Engine 2: Yahoo

Another goose egg. While Yahoo lets you search within a domain, it does not appear to provide detailed results for sub domains (specific accounts) within Twitter.

Engine 3: Google

Ah, getting closer. It appears that Google has archived some relevant tweets, but they are dated after the Sheik’s appearance. Looks like we had no advance warning(?)

Engine 4: Bing

Eureka! Bing indexed a lone relevant “warning” tweet prior to the Twitter Conference. The bad news? It completely missed the two tweets that Google had indexed.

Engine 5 – The Winner: Searchtastic

Searchtastic is a recently launched engine (in Beta) that specializes in searching for tweets from a specific user. It captured 8 tweets, which when compared to our own internal data source appears to (remarkably) have captured everything that the Sheik tweeted about us. Regrettably, it seems Searchtastic provides no RSS feed.

The bottom line? While no search engine, even one with feed capabilities offers enough data or structure for professional analysis, Searchtastic at least provides a very complete set of results.

What I’ve been wondering is if the Sheik had posted about the conference prior to the event. Did he “warn” us he would be making a surprise appearance? Even though we have our own internal system that has all tweets made during that period, I decided to see how the big four (and one small) search engines did with an archival search:

Engine 1: Twitter Search

No luck here, zero results for the hashtag #140tc when searching within twitter.com/the_ironsheik. That’s not unexpected, as Twitter’s search archive only goes back a week or two.

Engine 2: Yahoo

Another goose egg. While Yahoo lets you search within a domain, it does not appear to provide detailed results for sub domains (specific accounts) within Twitter.

Engine 3: Google

Ah, getting closer. It appears that Google has archived some relevant tweets, but they are dated after the Sheik’s appearance. Looks like we had no advance warning(?)

Engine 4: Bing

Eureka! Bing indexed a lone relevant “warning” tweet prior to the Twitter Conference. The bad news? It completely missed the two tweets that Google had indexed.

Engine 5 – The Winner: Searchtastic

Searchtastic is a recently launched engine (in Beta) that specializes in searching for tweets from a specific user. It captured 8 tweets, which when compared to our own internal data source appears to (remarkably) have captured everything that the Sheik tweeted about us (including the colorful language.) Regrettably, it seems Searchtastic provides no RSS feed.

Note that even with safesearch settings turned off on Bing and Google, the results were minimal.

The bottom line? While no search engine, even one with feed capabilities offers enough data or structure for professional analysis, Searchtastic at least provides a very complete set of results.

Twitter in Politics: Is It Legitimate or Evil?

admin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:56:48 +0000

My local paper carried a story today about Twitter’s fast penetration of the US Federal Government. There’s a lot of praise from new media types and transparency junkies, but of course the cynics abound:

Some bloggers have mused that Twitter may not be an effective way of communicating with Congress. Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices Online, asked in a recent posting if Twitter had “just become another tool for spamming politicians and decision makers.”

Judging from my experience with public figures and Twitter, one of the things that is most exciting is the raw pipeline to the public. Until the internet made it possible for “anybody” to amass a following the size of a city, getting into the public eye meant putting an increasing number of filters between you and your…fans.

In the end, though, it’s important to remember that Twitter (like WordPress) is just a tool, and it’s not inherently a good tool or a bad tool. It’s perfectly possible for one politician to be using it honestly to connect with their constituents and another to bang out press releases.

And, incidentally, both of those approaches are totally OK. Those who want the press releases will follow the accounts that pump it out. Those who don’t, won’t.

Business Blogging 101

admin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:39:43 +0000

The Parnassus Group will be hosting a “Business Blogging 101″ workshop on February 5th at Thinkspace in Redmond.

It’s for those who are totally new to blogging, and here are a few of the topics to be covered:

How to set up a blog * Why Google loves blogs * How to follow what the bloggers are saying about you * How to write posts that drive traffic and get links.

It starts at 6:00pm and ends at 8:00pm. It’s free and all are welcome to attend. No one is required to RSVP, but if you’d like to put your name down, go ahead and use Upcoming.

Thinkspace

admin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:45:10 +0000

The Parnassus Group is working with the Redmond company Thinkspace on crafting their new Thinkspace WordPress Blog and social media engagement strategy.

Thinkspace rents environmentally friendly executive suites, coworking space, and virtual offices to clients in downtown Redmond.

PhotoMedia Magazine Online

admin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:37:08 +0000

The Parnassus Group worked with the creators of PhotoMedia Magazine to create a dynamic home for their content on the web.

We worked with our designer to come up with a custom banner and color scheme, and helped implement a set of rotating advertisements that show up in the sidebars and the header.

Facebook application planning with Zazengo

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:58:08 +0000

Finding the right balance of viral features, optimizing for Facebook’s structure, and avoiding the various pitfalls in the ever-shifting Facebook Terms of Service can be a full-time job. We helped Zazengo spot viral opportunities and plan out the functionality of their application.

Blogger Engagement with RIPL

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:35:18 +0000

We consulted with RIPL on planning a blogger engagement strategy for the launch of their music-based social network.