Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Visualizing tweets

I discovered TweetStats this evening thanks to Bob Sprankle, and the visual reporting the site provides on a person’s Twitter habits is thought provoking. These graphs seem to invite analysis!

I started using Twitter at NECC 2007 in Atlanta. After a year of tweets, it’s safe to say using Twitter has become part of my daily routine:

TweetStats :: for wfryer

It looks like I’m a pretty regular twitterer throughout the week, although Sunday certainly sees less activity:

TweetStats :: for wfryer

Lunchtime and late evening appear to be my favorite times to tweet:

TweetStats :: for wfryer

I found the statistic (if I’m interpreting this correctly) that 43% of my tweets are replies to be interesting.

My Twitter tag cloud (without replies) is also interesting:

TweetCloud :: for wfryer (no replies)

Looks like I like to say thanks, new, learning, good, great, today, blog, digital, and oklahoma (among other things.)

I’m wondering if there is a similar tool which analyzes blog posts? Is this type of transparency a good thing in all cases? Probably not.

What is NOT reflected here is the time that is spent reviewing people’s profiles who follow me on Twitter. I’ve heard other people say “Twitter is just designed so you follow your friends,” but I have found it to be interesting as well as beneficial to follow other educators and periodically have their (your) thoughts and ideas cross my attention radar screen during the day. Because of problems with (apparently) Twitter and the Twitter Karma website, I’ve fallen behind in reviewing Twitter followers in the past few weeks. At this point, I’m still planning to continue following educators who follow me on Twitter. I do have a “no follow list” (which I am not going to publish) of sixty Twitter users who I’ve chosen NOT to follow… Often because they do not appear to be in education and are following thousands of people… I’m not sure how to describe the apparent agenda of these folks, but it is NOT an agenda of discussing learning, educational technologies, etc. I don’t know if my “follow the followers” mode of operations will be sustainable long-term, but it has been to date and it is amazing as well as enlightening to connect in this direct way with so many others. If I’m not following you currently, please don’t take it personally– I may not have gotten to your TwitterID in Twitter Karma yet!

Lots of people still don’t “get” Twitter. I generally recommend the excellent Educause PDF “7 Things You Should Know About Twitter” when people ask for resources about it. Can I explain the Twitter phenomenon completely? No. It has certainly been interesting to be on and “in” Twitter for the past year, however.

I’m sure Twitter backchannel discussions are going to proliferate this year at NECC! There is a NECC2008 Twitter account, btw. The creator hasn’t posted in a month, however. If the NECC organizers really advertise the channel and encourage attendees to follow the official account, I wonder how many followers it would have? (i.e. I wonder how many NECC attendees are using Twitter currently?)

It would be very interesting to see survey results for NECC attendees, in terms of the web 2.0 tools attendees are using regularly or have used at all. I would speculate that the number of Twitter users would be far less than 25 percent of all attendees, but I could be wrong.

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4 responses to “Visualizing tweets”

  1. Ben Avatar

    If you enjoy TweetStats, you should also check out Twitter Charts at http://www.xefer.com/twitter/ . Similar idea, but a slightly different take.

  2. Sue Waters Avatar

    “At this point, I’m still planning to continue following educators who follow me on Twitter” I’m with you that is also my policy. However I do feel for you because the more you keep adding the harder it becomes to maintain those conversations. Plus at what point do you say you’ve reached your limits? Fortunately you can usually tell from the names of who they are talking to if they are educators. My other method is if they have conversations with me.

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