#HRTechConf Twitter Conversation Analysis

The below is a quick (< 5 mins) analysis of Twitter conversation using hashtag #HRTechConf from September 28, 2010 through today.

For those of you that didn't have the chance to attend, I'd highly recommend it next year - it truly was a worthwhile experience and I can legitimately say I "learned" the whole time.  One of my key takeaways was covered in a recent post I wrote for FistfulofTalent.com titled, "HR Tech 2010: 'Social' Is Now HR's Baby (Sorry Marketing Department!)"

I didn't dive too deep due to the 5 minute limitation, but welcome your thoughts and comments.

P.S. If your screen (and/or my layout) isn't user friendly below, feel free to visit where I have the video hosted, here.  Also, I'd really recommend you check the video out at its hosted location because you'll be able to see the images and visuals much better.

Comments

[Trish McFarlane]

Josh,
I like the format you used to share the analysis. And, I am pleasantly surprised to see where I landed in the grand scheme of things. It's helpful for me as an attendee to see that I don't have to have the most tweets, but share information that is relevant to a wide audience. Fascinating analysis and thank you for pulling it together.

[Mark Bennett]

Hi Josh,
Ditto Trish's comment. This is a good example of what one can learn from the analysis. In addition, I liked that you touched on a wide set of concepts such as how groups can exhibit some insularity but be connected to the rest, the difference between static and dynamic analysis, etc. Next steps might be to talk about parallels in organizations and/or what other things to do to address issues uncovered by analysis. Great work!

[Omowale Casselle]

Josh,

Great visual analysis. I like how you are getting to the core of influence which is heavily dependent on 2-way conversation. The more people are willing to share their wisdom by helping and getting others involved, the more centrality and betweeness they have.

While that's not to say that network size isn't important, I think it is probably a multiplier if you are doing the other things right as in the case of someone like Laurie Ruettimann.

Omowale Casselle

[Gary Zukowski]

Josh,

First off, great job on the data mining of the hashtag. There really are some very interesting patterns emerging. Keep up the good work.

I would like to comment on your assessment of @tweetmyjobs and its potential influence. A few items to note:

- @tweetmyjobs is our root twitter account (we have thousands), and it's used primarily for jobseeker career advice, motivation, inspiration, and market information. The majority of the followers of that account are jobseekers, most of whom would not care about the conversation or events at #hrtech, so the lack of conversation from our followers around the hashtag doesn't surprise me. If the conference was for career coaching or perhaps a virtual job fair, then I would expect there to be more interest.
- You mentioned that we only sent out 1 tweet with the hashtag during the conference. We actually sent 7 (6 tweets and 1 retweet). They were more to broadcast our booth location, as opposed to looking for conversation.
- The other players you mentioned in the video were tweeting and collaborating primarily during the sessions as attendees. This is obviously where the power of Twitter really shines, because non-attendees can "virtually" attend through the stream.

Bottom line is that the number of followers should be a factor in the influence of the account, provided that the content sent to the audience is relevant to that audience. The less relevant the content, the less influence the person will be.

Again, great job on pulling this together...

Take care!

Gary Zukowski

[Jonathan]

Great analysis, Josh!

I've long considered # of followers to be a red herring when evaluated as a measure of Twitter reach or influence, particularly as 3rd-party apps continually improve and refine our ability to filter through the volume of tweets by topic, etc. However, I've never delved into the data in the manner that you did here to test that hypothesis! It's a great service to the community, IMHO, to examine the data carefully and draw conclusions about how we're actually using Twitter in the HR world.

Your second bit of analysis (getting posted here soon, no doubt?) was equally impressive:
http://www.screencast.com/users/KnightBishop/folders/Jing/media/ba55617c-97be-43db-96f2-056b9726af2f

I've recently started measuring influence, and my preferred metric is "mentions" - believe that aligns well with your findings here. Appreciate the insights; keep them coming!

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