Welcome to the Friday#

This week in The Sizzle: It’s true – England cricketers should not be allowed access to Twitter and baby boomers continue to multiply 60 years on. In the Fri up we take a look at Bliar’s book launch through Brandwatch. In The Sauce, Armando Iannucci offers his hilarious stance on the Blair/Brown saga and the bankers explain via autotune.

The Sizzle

• Netanyahu joins Twitter and speaks to his nation in the third person – reminiscent of Kanye West
• Apple bobs into social media music space
• How fast does information spread on twitter? Washington Post journo suspended for posting hoax to check
• Baby boomers continue to multiply 60 years on – this time on Facebook
• Finally, MySpace gives in and plugs into Facebook
• England’s Cricketers should not be trusted on Twitter ‘Anyone who uses Twitter understands it should have been a DM…’ Really?

The Fri-Up

• Iannucci on Blair/Brown: ‘Tony could s**t in your hat and you’d want to buy him a drink’
• Big Gary sees a ghost
• Those arty types at Multitouch Barcelona show us a Real Human Interface
• A little autotune clears up the bankers’ mixed messages

Welcome to the Friday#

This week in The Sizzle: England’s cricketers have dressing room secrets to hide and the Smartphone App market reaches more than $2.2bn. In the Fri up we take a look at Lola the wheelie-bin cat’s terryfying ordeal through Brandwatch. In The Sauce, Apple sues David Copperfield and The Sun lets you bin Mary Bale.

The Sizzle

• Smartphone App Market Reached More Than $2.2 Billion In The First Half Of 2010
• Now mutually beneficial relationship between TV and social media to become increasingly competitive
• Twitter ban for England’s cricketers: Divisive and could lead to dressing room secrets being revealed
• When you close your eyes do you see the Google logo? Here’s why
• Double hand transplant via twitter – too much information?
• Reverse running mania: “It just came upon me when I was in the park running forwards and I thought I could simply turn around…” – yes you can!

The Fri-Up

• Play whack cat woman
• “Dont sue me, I’m only a sauceror” – Apple has it in for David Copperfield
• Loved Toy Story 3? Here’s some more clever 3D stuff

First, we improved the Mentions Component of the dashboard, by giving it a more traditional pagination mechanism. This means that you can now go through long lists of mentions very quickly and reliably. You can also directly jump to any particular page of mentions. This makes it much more manageable for Data Analysts to review and categorise many mentions.

Mentions Component with new pagination

Next, we optimised the Brandwatch back-end to speed up the category and country group filters. You can now apply these filters to any component and still get your data quickly.

Finally, we simplified the ‘Create workspace’ links (top-left part of the screen), and added confirmation pop-ups when closing components – a nice way to avoid closing a component by mistake!

New 'Create workspace' links and confirmation pop-up when closing a component

All these issues were raised during the first of a monthly series of usability studies that we started earlier this month. If you are interested in taking part, and would like to tell us about your experience with Brandwatch, do not hesitate to contact us.

Based in central Brighton, with backing from Business Angels and Venture Capital, we have built a team of the brightest developers and built our own web crawler and web-based user interface. Continuing our expansion we are seeking to hire a Javascript Developer to enhance and extend our web-based user interface. Working in partnership with internal UI developers, you will play an active role from initial design to implementation and release.

Your main duties will be:

1. Join the user interface team within our product development team
2. Design, implement and refine new interface functionality
3. Find innovative solutions to all issues encountered by users
4. Periodically report to the rest of the team, and to the Technical Director

You will need great analytical and interpersonal skills, and should be willing to learn on an ongoing basis. You should have an IT-related degree, and will have strong experience in:

1. Advanced Javascript programming
2. Developing AJAX applications
3. Working with DOM, XHTML, CSS, and Web standards
4. Developing with jQuery

Experience of the following would be a bonus:

1. Mootools
2. The MVC and ActiveRecord patterns and ORM
3. HTML5
4. Agile development methodologies
5. Greasemonkey and Firefox extension development
6. Rhino
7. DWR

Salary will be in the 25-40k range, based on skills and experience, plus bonus.

Interested candidates should send their CV and a cover letter to fabrice@brandwatch.com

Absolutely no recruitment agencies.

Welcome to the Friday#

This week in The Sizzle: Facebook places – how to avoid being physically poked – and English professor kicked out of Starbucks – doesn’t speak their language. The Fri Up gives you a quick product update and a look through Brandwatch at A-Level results day. In The Sauce Thierry Henry gets it and the BBC drops a bomb on Croydon.

The Sizzle

• Should the police be relying on social media to solve major crimes? The US thinks so.
• Ground Zero Mosque hires social media expert with beauty and luxury goods background – the world goes nuts
• Facebook places – How to avoid being physically poked
• We spend half our waking lives consuming media
• Oxford comma: Microblogging makes it into the Oxford English Dictonary…. along with chillax
• More fast food madness: English professor kicked out of Starbucks for not speaking their language….

The Fri-Up

A-Level playing field

We all remember that fateful day – but as the results get better each year, university places get more elusive how are candidates feeling and what are they looking to social media to provide? Are they looking for reassurance, for advice or to boast on their excellent results?The first obvious step was to look at the sentiment surrounding the subject. Since everyone is doing so well, A-Level results day should be joyous and positive, right?

A-Level results by sentiment

From our graph we see that most of the noise leading up to the results is positive and then a large slice remains positive on results day – with a little bit of bad feeling creeping in, unsurprisingly as the results are revealed. With still under 100 negative mentions – we are a truly great and intelligent nation!

The second interesting point, particularly for marketeers, is to look at where this demographic is heading to boast/find information/gain advice.

• Video: The late Thierry Henry – ‘But St Peter, it was only a game of football…’
• If you’re not great at paper scissor stone and hide and seek makes you lonely read this: How to win at hangman
• BBC dumps Gulf oil spill on Middlesborough and drops bomb on Croydon

Welcome to the Friday#

This week in The Sizzle 19 people believe Facebook should be paying us and the Methodist church blocks Rev Ross’ first Twitter mass. The Fri Up gives you a quick product update and a look through Brandwatch at where sports fans allegiances lie within social media. In The Sauce we salute our favourite air steward and highlight some inadequate movies.

The Sizzle

• Marketers to Spend $220 Million on Advertisements in Social Games This Year
• Flight attendant leaves his job via the emergency slide and becomes a social media phenomenon
• 19 people believe Facebook should be paying us
• Methodist church blocks Rev Ross’ Twitter mass
• Facebook nearing UK saturation point
• Kanye West’s Twitter – social media experts weigh in

The Fri-Up

England Football

Looking at the graph, we can see that Cricket shows a news and blog heavy graph with 52% of posts attributed to news sites on the final day of the test with forums coming close second. In the world of football, news is not so important. The mentions are far more chat based, with match day being dominated by forums, blogs and a healthy slice of Twitter.

The Sauce

Something for the weekend:

• Pizza hut makes Korean girls want to dance… apparently
• Chris wants to meet you HERE at 4pm (I’m just passing on a message..)
• Hit the slide! Flight attendant, Stephen Slater’s last minutes in animation
• #Inadequate movies

First of all, we have made it easier to compare a group of queries, with two small changes:

• We modified the Site Analysis for Query Group component to use a stacked bar chart, that way each query is highlighted using a different colour, and you can click on each area of the chart to go through to the list of mentions for that particular query on that particular site
  

  Site Analysis for a Query Group: click on an area to see the list of mentions

• We made it possible to show or hide individual queries on the History for Query Group component’s graph
  

  History for a Query Group: use the check-boxes to hide or show queries

Secondly, we started a hardware upgrade process to speed up the Brandwatch dashboards. You may have already noticed that several components load more quickly now, particularly for very large queries.

Finally, the Mention Download limit has been increased from 1000 to 5000 mentions, making it easier to get hold of data for large queries.

Welcome to the Friday #

This week in The Sizzle, Kanye’s chosen one (Steven from Coventry) in semi-retirement shock and the Gulf states look at a ban on certain BlackBerry features. The Fri Up delivers a quick tech update and takes a look at yesterday’s Rajar figures through Brandwatch. The Sauce adds a bit of weekend to the mix with Eastenders the sitcom. 

The Sizzle

• Saved from closure by Social Media: 6Music biggest and most listened to digital only radio station
• Kanye’s chosen one in semi-retirement shock
• Bill Cosby must prove he is still alive after Twitter storm started in Bristol
• Gulf states to ban Blackberry features
• Faceboook and other social media cost UK millions
• Acid tongued Live Nation boss joins twitter – PR team takes cover

The Fri-Up

Since the social media furore over the closure of BBC 6Music – it seems many more people have taken a dip into digital radio to see what there is on offer. Despite its critics, digital radio now accounts for a significant slice of all radio listening – 24.6% with BBC6 Music leading the field with 1.194m listeners.

We thought we’d take a look at the figures of leading digital radio stations through the eyes of Brandwatch. All stations have active Twitter and Facebook accounts, most listeners already engaging with digital radio are likely to be tech aware and many would be using social networks. So who is talked about the most?

Looking at the Brandwatch graphs below for the UK’s leading digital radio stations, we can clearly see that by far the most buzz on social networks is generated by BBC 1Xtra with BBC6 Music coming in at not even a close second.

So despite the rajar figures putting 6Music at nearly double the listening figures with a 1.9m weekly reach, in the Social Media stakes, 1Xtra wins hands down.

The fact that the station is picked up so well within social networks epitomises the typically young, tech savvy demographic of hip-hop and R&B fans and this study serves to highlight for marketeers, exactly where to find them!

The Sauce

Something for the weekend:

• Eastenders the sitcom
• At a loose end for this weekend? Get huge!
• Sleep talkin’ man
• Finally – What the F*** is your social media strategy?

Firstly, the Chart component can now display sentiment data. For example you can easily graph the sentiment spread of your query by type of site.

Taking StarCraft II as an example:

StarCraft II sentiment by site type

That single graph gives a good idea of

• how much buzz a query gets from different types of web page
• what the overall sentiment is – very positive in this example
• how each site type has a different sentiment tonality – in this case, Twitter has definitely the most opinionated buzz

Secondly, we have added an option to mark individual user accounts as “read-only”. Users with read-only accounts can log in the system and view dashboards, but cannot modify these dashboards. This is handy if you want to prepare a dashboard for a customer, and give that customer access to the dashboard, in the confidence that the customer will not delete pages or components of the dashboard by mistake.

Finally, a quick reminder that you can follow us on @brandwatchtweet for general updates, and on @brandwatchinfo for technical updates (system upgrades, issues and fixes).

Welcome to the Friday #

This week in The Sizzle, Cisco has a go at recreating the Old Spice magic and Kanye West makes a tweet of himself. The Fri Up delivers a quick tech update and an analysis on O2′s claim that the iPhone 4 was the ‘best launch yet’. We take a look at it through Brandwatch. The Sauce adds a bit of weekend to the mix with another great video and some social media monopoly.

The Sizzle

• Cisco has a go at recreating the Old Spice magic
• “I follow no one” Kanye makes a tweet of himself
• Coca-Cola and Lean Mean split after Facebook gaffe
• The quiet success of StumbleUpon – but who uses it?
• How Big is Social Media in the UK? [VIDEO]
• Graduate tax? Tip no 1: Student wins £10k over FB paedo slur
• Newport love: Spoof on Jay-Z and Alicia Keys track racks up over 1m hits
• World’s oldest Twitter user, and friend of the stars, dies aged 104

The Fri-Up

Yesterday, the Evening Standard reported that Spanish-owned O2 was hailing the launch of the iPhone 4 ‘the most successful seen in the UK’. Although There has been a lot of noise surrounding the launch, in the Brandwatch office our perception has been that the buzz was dominated by reception problems and the unusual response to the faults by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

We decided to test the water using Brandwatch.

For the purposes of this launch, we decided to use the #fail test. We’ve had a query set up on #fail for a little while now. Having inserted thousands of brands into the brandwatch tool, we can see at a glance, which brands are included in a post that people have tagged with #fail.

The word cloud below clearly shows that the top two mentioned brands used against #fail are Apple and iPhone.

Our findings were further backed up by a flash survey from rightmobilephone which found that 63% of respondents were ‘particularly angered’ by Jobs’ email in which he told one early iPhone 4 adopter to ‘avoid holding [the phone] in that way’.

The mobile phone comparison website polled 836 iPhone 4 users, 93% of whom claimed to have already been affected by a loss of signal whilst gripping the handset to make calls, whilst 78% of owners dubbed the fault ‘an insult’.

We love Apple and salivate over their new launches – but calling this the ‘best launch yet’ seems a strong claim.

The Sauce

Something for the weekend:

• Toy Story vs Inception
  
• Social Media Monopoly: you don’t want to get sent to MySpace!
• Always wanted a tattoo  – not sure if it would look right? Try it on a lego man first..