Social Media Trends: Twitter and Analytics

Social Media Trends: Twitter is stepping up in a big way this year and will soon be offering a new analytics dashboard. Analytics are key due to the fact that they provide measurable data to help answer how effective a platform is being used. It's difficult to imagine Google and Facebook without analytics and it's an understatement to say that Twitter is long overdue for an in house analytics solution. The news was delivered earlier this week by Ross Huffman, a member of Twitter's business development team, at the Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit.

A blog post on the Webtrends blog, a company that follows Social Media Trends, outlined what is currently known about the new Twitter analytics dashboard:

• The service will be free (in the beginning at least. Don't be surprised to see a premium version to roll out sometime in the future.)


• The team formerly known as Smallthought Systems is responsible for the development. The same team created Trendly.


• The data will be provided in real time.


• It's expected that Twitter will make the API available to third party developers.

The news is a double edged sword and will be welcomed by some and will frustrate others. The demand for analytics is high, however several 3rd party applications may loose market share or be forced to develop a product that is above and beyond what Twitter offers. Klout, a social media trend setting company, is an example of an already popular Twitter analytics solution. A Klout score measures a users influence, amplification, and true reach. Twitalyzer is another popular choice. These type of services are the ones that will face the most difficulty.

This isn't the first time that Twitter has announced a service that may cripple 3rd party applications. The recent launch of the new Twitter user interface and the Twitter smartphone app have been a source of much controversy this year. The new Twitter user interface challenges some of the perks offered by Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, CoTweet, and Seesmic. The Twitter smartphone app (formerly known as Tweetie) challenges apps such as Echofon, Twitterrific, TwitBird, Birdfeed, and Twit Pro. Twitter has been accused of biting at the many hands that feed it due to the fact that many users access Twitter through 3rd party applications.

On the positive side, real time analytics are an in demand social media trend. Analytics will help business marketing efforts and tell a user how they can improve Twitter use. The number of Twitter followers a person has and how often someone is listed are only a small part of the equation. The number of retweets and @replies are also factors that need to be measured.

The Twitter analytics dashboard is expected to start rolling out by the end of the year.

A list of 21 Twitter Analytics tools via TechnoBuzz