Twitter Approval Matrix - June 2009

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 3

Last month I posted the first Twitter Approval Matrix with data that spanned the month of May and different sources such as Hashtag.org, scraping archives, and observations. This month I received some help from Joe Fernandez the CEO of Klout.net and Dan Zarrella the Social & Viral Marketing Scientist for danzarella.com. They provided some great 'hard' data that allowed me to better place more items on the grid this month.

A quick refresher, the matrix shows four quadrants used to describe trends found on Twitter, or related sites such as hashtag.org, tweestats.com, etc. The Y-axis is partly analytical and shows popularity (mostly through scraped numbers) or perceived popularity (in the future nominated by you). The other part of the grid is more curated and subjective. The X-axis has been plotted based on my personal opinion. You may agree or disagree with my placements and that's all good to me. After all, it is about taste. The matrix and plots do not represent a thorough analytical treatment, but rather a view of the trends that could be found in data sources allowing me to plot with some sense of relevance.

For this post, I've limited the data and activity to the month of June. Again, I'll continue with this project as long as I get enough feedback/help. So, if you are interested in contributing, you can comment here, or read the original post to figure out the best way for you to submit your plots.

I hope you enjoy this and see it as a potentially useful tool to monitor trends that your fellow readers are tracking.

Twitter Approval Matrix

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 6

There is a lot of interest in figuring out how to most effectively use Twitter. The Twitter Book is a great start to put some of the of the puzzle pieces together. The book got me thinking about some of the people and tags that are popular. I was amazed at how Ashton Kutcher, @aplusk, surpassed 2 million followers relatively quickly. My curiosity led me to scraping his tweet archive and producing a Wordle of his tweets. I found very little substantive content as compared to Kathy Sierra (@kathysierra) or Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly). Don't get me wrong, Ashton does tweet, but it's about boring stuff, IMO. But boring to me could be exciting to one of his followers.

This got me thinking further about tastes. We all have different tastes. I like to make sense of the world around me by collecting as much information as I can, analyzing it (in my head and in programs), and then visualizing it. So, that led me to the matrix idea. Why not plot Twitter activity, trends, users, tags on a matrix? For years, I've been reading the New York Magazine and always scanned its Approval Matrix. They describe their Twitter version as, "Our deliberately oversimplified guide to whose tweets are worth following." I thought I'd do the same, but with more than just who but also what is worth following. I decided to throw in some analysis and a user contributed component: you. The "you" part is for the future. That is, I would like you to contribute coordinates for where you think items should land on a future grid similar to the one below.

This matrix shows four quadrants used to describe tastes found on Twitter, or related sites such as hashtag.org, tweestats.com, etc. The Y-axis is partly analytical and shows popularity (mostly through scraped numbers) or perceived popularity (in the future nominated by you). The other part of the grid is more curated and subjective. The X-axis has been plotted based on my personal opinion. You may agree or disagree with my placements and that's all good to me. After all, it is about taste. The matrix and plots do not represent a thorough analytical treatment, but rather a view of the trends that could be found in data sources allowing me to plot with some sense of relevance.

For this post, I've limited the data and activity to the month of May. I will make this a monthly post if I get enough feedback/help. So, here's how you can nominate topics or people for the matrix:

• You can tag any of your tweets, RTs using #approvalmatrix and I'll find it.
• Tweet to @mikehatora
• DM mikehatora
• Send email to mikeh {at} oreilly {dot} com

If you want to suggest where the tweet or subject belongs on the matrix, do this:

• Notice the numbers on the grid, 1-10, in North/South and East/West directions.
• Notice the quadrant tags NE, SE,NW,SW, on the outer corners of each quadrant.

So NE, 6,8 would put your suggestion between #jobs and #followfriday.

Here are a couple of examples that could end up on future ApprovalMatrix postings:

• @mikehatora #wwdc, NE 5,9 Interesting new stuff from Apple, but seems to have NOT leapfrogged ahead again this year. The plot is hot [N], because lots of hastags have #wwdc and the comment shows it is interesting [E] but not at the 8-10 scale of smart but rather a 5-right, 9-up on the plot]. You could say a topic like this is hotter than it is smart/interesting/useful.
• Starting new job on Monday, thanks to Twitter posting. #ApprovalMatrix This will be picked up in a scrape and added to the jobs/careers bucket. It'll likely will be a NE 5,8 aggregated with the other job data and comments.
• #approvalmatrix NE 7,8 RT @timoreilly Three-part series on how Google does search quality evaluation, starts here: http://bit.ly/QIgwX Here the tweeter is Re-Tweeting someone (timoreilly) and indicating that it is an important item in the Hot and Smart quadrant (NE). I'd look to see how many RTs have happened after the initial tweet.
• DM mikehatora SE 7,8 #hr Indicates the hashtag #hr, which is Human Resources, is not trending up, and is boring according to the sender.

Feel free to nominate people, tags, related news, etc. I can't guarantee your nomination will make it into next month's post, but it just might. This is a chance for you to put things on our Radar while letting us know what your tastes are.

I hope you enjoy this and see it as a potentially useful tool to monitor trends that your fellow readers are tracking.

State of the Computer Book Market 2008, part 5 -- eBooks and Summary

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 6

In this final post, 1, 2, 3, and 4 were posted earlier, I will provide a summary of the first four posts, provide some insight into a view of top Authors, and include some data on electronic books and how the digital world is catching up to the print world.

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State of the Computer Book Market 2008, part 4 -- The Languages

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 23

In this fourth post (parts one, two and three are found here) on the State of the Computer Book Market, we will look at programming languages and drill in a little on each language area.

Overall the market for programming languages was down 5.9% in 2008 when compared with 2007. There were 1,849,974 units sold in 2007 versus 1,740,808 units sold in 2008, which is a decrease of 109,166  units. So the unhealthy 8% loss in the Overall Computer Book Market was not completely fueled by programming-oriented books.

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State of the Computer Book Market 2008, Part 3: The Publishers

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 5

In this third installment, (see part one and part two; part four to come later this week), we will look at how Publishers fared in 2007 when compared to 2006. The chart below shows our dashboard view of the Large publishers’ results for 2007. The most notable factor is that Wiley continues to hold the leading spot as the largest publisher, with 30% market share of units sold, while Pearson lost 2% market share and O'Reilly gains 1%. (We’ll look at revenue share later in the analysis.)

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State of the Computer Book Market 2008, Part 2: The Technologies

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 2

In this second installment (the first post is found here), we look at computer book sales in specific technology categories. Remember that we've organized the data into six "Category Families" -- Systems and Programming, Web Design and Development, Business Applications, Digital Media Applications, Consumer Operating Systems and Devices, and Other. Within each Family are category group, super-category, category, and atomic category, in a five-level hierarchy. For example, Systems and Programming includes programming languages, databases, software engineering, general programming, security, and so on. In the rest of this post, we will contrast Q4 2007 with Q4 2008 and the whole year of 2007 with 2008.

As a refresher, here is a new treemap of the Category Families with their sub areas for Q4 2008 compared to Q4 2007. In this view, we've changed the thickness of the borders to highlight the category hierarchy.

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State of the Computer Book Market 2008, Part 1: The Market

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 8

As described in Computer Book Sales as a Technology Trend Indicator, and our other posts on the State of the Computer Book Market we have an updated series of posts that show the whole market's final 2008 numbers. Remember this data is from Bookscan's weekly top 3,000 titles sold. Bookscan measures actual cash register sales in bookstores. Simply put, if you buy a book in the United States, there's a high probability it will get recorded in this data. Retailers such as Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon make up the lion's share of these sales.

Book Market Performance

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Ignite Boston 5

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 9

The fifth Ignite Boston will be Thursday, February 12, from 5pm to 9pm at The Hooley House in the Faneuil Hall area of Boston. There is no cover charge or any sort of fee. The event is free as in 'Free Beer'.

Since there is limited space at the Hooley House, you must RSVP here to secure a chance to attend. By RSVPing you will also have the chance to win $300 worth of O'Reilly books of your choosing. You must be present to win. There will likely be other items like tee-shirts and other promo items for those who alert us ahead that they plan to attend.

From 5-5:45 pm, mingle and talk tech with your fellow FOOs, alpha geeks, and techies from the greater Boston area. After the mingling and social stuff, on to the select keynotes. Then, onto the lightening talks.

We will be posting the talks as soon as we have a list of all speakers. If you would like to speak, please go here and enter a talk. We hope to see you at the Hooley House Thursday evening February 12.

Is Adobe Still Sleeping Well?

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 10

Last May, Tim O'Reilly posted a piece on whether or not Adobe was worried about the new threat to their dominance in the RIA space by the introduction of Silverlight from Microsoft. In a nutshell, the answer was no. From a book sales perspective, that was true and remains true today. But there is more to that answer than what appears at face-value from data on book sales.

Silverlight 2 is the product that Microsoft is backing in the RIA race. That in itself is worth, at least, some restless nights. Silverlight has not become a publishing event. At the present time, there are 10 Silverlight books published yet only one is on the current release and is truly a 2 book because it offers free, or paid, updates all the way through to a FCS launch.

But it does appear as though Silverlight is gaining some ground on Adobe. At least on Search volume. The image below shows the Google Trends for these technologies

silverlight [blue] adobe flash [red] adobe flex [orange] adobe air [green]

        A.    Adobe AIR Puts Companies on Desktops

        B.     Adobe Introduces Adobe AIR, Adobe Flex 3 Software

        C.    Nokia to bring Microsoft Silverlight to mobiles

        D.     Microsoft reveals new content partners, DRM for Silverlight

        E.    Microsoft to highlight Silverlight, 'Oslo' at show

        F.     Onstream Media Debuts Microsoft Silverlight Webcasting Service So the long and short of this is that Silverlight is likely not causing Adobe to lose sleep at night, but rather giving them one of those a rough, restless nights ... knowing that soon Microsoft will launch a credible product aimed squarely at them.

Ignite Boston 4 -- Videos Uploaded

by Mike Hendrickson | comments: 0

Ignite Boston 4 was an interesting and insightful event. We have many things to take away as we plan our next event for January. One of the themes, which was re-crystalized in my mind, was to do work on things that matter - things of substance and World importance! Following that line of thinking, Voting is one of those things that we cannot take for granted and then complain when a new administration gets into office and enacts policies that affect us all. Join us all on trying to 'get the vote out' by talking to folks about our historical vote coming soon. Regardless of your affiliation, vote and get people to vote.

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Recent Posts

• Ignite Boston 4 - Tonight! on September 8, 2008
• Ignite Boston 4 on August 18, 2008
• Ignite Boston 3 - Next week on May 23, 2008
• Ignite Boston 3 on May 6, 2008
• State of the Computer Book Market, Part 4 - The Languages on March 5, 2008
• State of the Computer Book Market, part 3 -- The Publishers on March 3, 2008
• State of the Computer Book Market, Part 2: The Technologies on February 22, 2008
• State of the Computer Book Market, Part 1: The Market on February 20, 2008
• OLPC and the Kindle on December 21, 2007
• Ignite Boston - Next Week on August 30, 2007