Social
Media Measurement: Twitter
 *
Which
Twitter Profile Analysis Tool
Rules the Nest?
5 online Twitter profile analysis services compared:
Twinfluence, TwitterAnalyzer, Twitter Grader, Twitterholic, and TwitterScore.
by Chris
Near, Director of Research, KDPaine & Partners
Don't
miss Chris Near's other
article on measuring Twitter, also in this issue of The
Measurement Standard: "5 Twitter Sentiment Analyzers Reviewed." The
Twitter analysis tools in the article on this page rank a person's
entire Twitter profile in terms of popularity and engagement, while
the sentiment analysis tools of the
other article look specifically
at the tone of individual tweets.
So
you want to measure Twitter... The good news is that
you have several online Twitter profile analysis/ranking services
to choose from. The bad news is that
you will probably find that none of them offer all the metrics that
you really need or want.
Especially if you are looking to do the kind of between-client
comparisons that we at
KDPaine & Partners are usually interested in.
To do
very accurate measurement of Twitter, you typically have to use human
readers. It's the only way to really
understand the language. But, to have human eyes read and rate
every
tweet often takes a lot of time and money. For fast and free measurement,
the online profile analysis tools are the way to go.
Automated
analysis has accuracy problems, especially when it comes to the subtle
language iinvolved in measuring sentiment. (See "5
Twitter Sentiment Analyzers Reviewed.") If we had a
way to combine all the tools reviewed below, then we might have
something really useful. Until then,
we'll
have
to weigh the pros and cons of each and make the best decision.
So here's
my report on five of the Twitter profile analyzers. I'm sure there
are more out there, and I'd love to hear about them. (And if you
think what
I have to say here needs some clarification, please
let me know).
 Twinfluence offers
interesting statistics (social capital, velocity, centralization)
as well as a percent ranking system that compares
the twitterer you analyze to other people. The catch
is that it only compares
you to other people that have previously been analyzed on Twinfluence.
Their website says: "The #XXX score is
your overall rank compared to all other twitterers that have
been analyzed by Twinfluence.
If your rank is #400, that means there are 399 other twitterers
in the system who have higher reach scores than you."
To
date, there have been less than 100,000 profiles analyzed
on Twinfluence (that number is going up every day). So you can't
rank anyone against the other 5 or 6 million twitterers
out there
(and that number is really going up every day,
see Mashable).
That makes the Twinfluence ranking pretty useless until more people
get analyzed
on their site.
TwitterAnalyzer is
good for getting graphs that show your past month's message volume,
your tweeting habits, the subjects you discuss,
the
links you use, and pretty much everything you would ever
want to know. Which is great. But it lacks what is sometimes the
most important thing: a ranking or scoring system that compares different
Twitter pages. Without that you can't make competitive comparisons.
Twitter
Grader sounds excellent, in theory. It takes the follow/follower
ratio and combines measures of engagement to come up with a
final grade of 0 to 100.
It gives a score based on a large population
(2,158,455).
However, a
recent hubspot Twitter
grading
blog post implies that their algorithm is still a work in progress.
And I
do have problems with it. Consider the following results:
How
can Vocus have relatively few followers,
zero updates and still get a score of 87? Even
if there were 10,000 people following Vocus, there
are no updates so there
is no communication or engagement between Vocus and its
followers. Why does it get any score at all?
I
also looked at Twitterholic and TwitterScore,
but found them too problematic to take seriously. On the day I tested
Twitterholic over half of my
searches resulted in page errors. (Since then,
I've
tested it with a little more success.) The site gives a ranking for
your Twitter page, but it is based entirely on the number of your followers.
It doesn't calculate anything like updates or other forms of engagement.
It's good for popularity, but not activity or interaction.
TwitterScore
gives you a rank comparing you to all the other people that have
previously been
ranked on their site. Right now the rank is only out of 43,048 users.
They also give you a score on a 10 point scale, but there is no information
on how they come up with that score or what their ranking is based
on.
Which
service rules the nest?
If your
goal is to give the clients a final score or ranking that compares
one Twitter page with others, then I would recommend
Twitter Grader. (But look out for anomalous
scores, as noted above.) If your goal is to track clients'
competitors and how they use Twitter and what topics they
discuss and
who
follows
them, then
I would
recommend TwitterAnalyzer. I also recommend
that you keep looking: None of these is perfect, and newer
and better tools will come along quickly. 
Don't
miss Chris Near's other
article on measuring Twitter, also in this issue of The Measurement
Standard: "5
Twitter Sentiment Analyzers Reviewed"
 Chris
Near is Director of Research for KDPaine & Partners. Chris
recently graduated with his master's in communications and currently
devotes most of
his time to measuring PR and developing social media methodologies.
That is, of course, when he's not at home tending to his lovely wife,
Valerie,
or chasing around his tireless two year-old son, Brendan.
*
Thanks for the Twitter icon, DesignReviver.
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