I still think Twitter’s interesting; it informs me and pleases me in ways no other service comes near. Also, it lets me talk to the world, and when you do that, you find yourself asking “is anyone listening?” Fortunately, Twitter will tell you. The numbers are big enough that the stats might be of general interest. Of course, Social Media Professionals all have known all this stuff for years, but most of us aren’t those.
Where the stats are · On Twitter I’m @timbray, so my stats are at ads.twitter.com/user/timbray/tweets (you can’t see that, you’ll need to plug in your own handle).
My analytics in mid-December 2015.
It’s well-put-together; words whose meaning aren’t instantly obvious are nicely linked to explanations. I’m not sure I would have tracked precisely the same selection of data, but it’s not obviously crazy.
Also, you can click on any individual tweet and get the real poop on its interaction with the world; see below.
The picture on that tweet is massively cool, BTW.
Where I stand · As I write this I have 32,870 followers. If this were still 2013, that would be top-0.1% territory. I honestly don’t have deep ideas as to why, but suspect starting early, having interesting employers, trying to amuse, and flaming soft targets like Apple and Oracle all help.
Big take-aways · I have two:
On average, anything I write here appears on a number of screens which is about 1% of my nominal “follower count”.
My follower count changed hardly at all in the last three years.
That last one could imply that Twitter’s not growing very fast. Or that it is, but that I’m becoming less interesting at an almost exactly equal rate. Or something else.
So, what gives a tweet impact? I could speculate at length but I honestly don’t feel very wise on this subject, so I’ll just reproduce the numbers for a few days’ tweets and let you draw your own conclusions. Haven’t put too much work into the table formatting, and the timezone is wrong; sorry.
When | Tweet text | impressions | engagements | retweets | replies | likes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
For Ingress players: Whatever you think of the Middle East situation, this is stylish: t.co | 2210 | 171 | 0 | 2 | 1 | |
Trump and el-Baghdadi peddle similar fantasies to ordinary people living in diminished and stressed conditions - t.co | 3741 | 55 | 5 | 0 | 8 | |
The NFL has been really lame these last 2 weekends, not a single really good game since Dec 3rd. | 3726 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
When you’re driving home with a Christmas tree on the roof, everyone smiles at you. | 4311 | 29 | 4 | 4 | 11 | |
@tekgrrl I suspect it’s highly regional; better on the West Coast, 2nd best on the east, poor in the middle. | 97 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
The Pacific Northwest at its worst: 5°C, raining hard, brisk wind. Find a cave, build a fire. | 4488 | 40 | 5 | 4 | 9 | |
[Verifying my OpenPGP key: openpgp4fpr:c32a9e14128d8468fadb2f21bf396453f4cad9af] | 3854 | 25 | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
@KeybaseIO Verifying myself: I am timbray on Keybase.io. Puix67J0VLXBCNRadpp-J8oGoQGLtLls-5ii / t.co | 368 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
Verifying: I am timbray on Keybase.io. Puix67J0VLXBCNRadpp-J8oGoQGLtLls-5ii / t.co [had to replace my Yubikey] | 3976 | 31 | 0 | 1 | 2 | |
@nelson Yeah, but what’s that cert *for*, I wanna know… | 276 | 11 | 0 | 2 | 1 | |
Thinking Michael Lewis should consider writing about the Google/Symantec drama; there’s a story in there: t.co | 5397 | 277 | 7 | 1 | 10 | |
Canada welcomes refugees: t.co | 3866 | 53 | 5 | 0 | 6 | |
Muse live: Polished, good songs, good sound, good lights, good energy. A little light on soul & spontaneity & brains. Kids loved it | 3693 | 21 | 1 | 1 | 4 | |
Taking the whole family - 9 and 16 year olds included - to see Muse. Let's see how this works out. | 4057 | 27 | 0 | 5 | 12 | |
@bodil We greybeards do retain some scraps of imagination amongst the wreckage and decay. | 283 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
451 on Reddit: t.co | 4589 | 32 | 2 | 1 | 6 | |
@hananc Wow, thanks for the pointer | 886 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
Took me a few days to capture thoughts on my 1st year at AWS. “Screw the shiny new.” t.co | 3959 | 217 | 5 | 1 | 19 | |
@carlmalamud @pmarca Nah, a “certain people” T-shirt. Or rather, “A certain person.” | 466 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
A year in the cloud, working for Amazon. “Screw the shiny new.” t.co | 7371 | 1014 | 25 | 3 | 45 | |
The fossil-fuel biz may be hurting, but I bet gas stations are rolling in dough. My fill-up has *not* fallen by a factor of 2½. | 4364 | 26 | 2 | 8 | 4 | |
Donald Trump is a walking, talking Overton Window. | 3753 | 21 | 3 | 0 | 7 | |
Twitter suggests that people and the world are interesting, but visiting the “Moments” tab quickly dispels that impression. | 6108 | 52 | 10 | 0 | 16 | |
@koush Slack is so 2014 | 377 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 4 | |
Deep, powerful piece on guilt responsibility, terror, and guns: t.co | 13772 | 369 | 38 | 2 | 42 | |
How it all works. t.co | 4923 | 467 | 2 | 2 | 12 | |
The Hugging Will Continue Until Morale Improves t.co | 3882 | 137 | 4 | 0 | 7 | |
@brentsimmons @SlackHQ Problem is, it seems to be working for them. I also would very much like an intermediate tier. | 327 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
Many noting Swift now open-source without adding the essential words “Apache 2”. Would’ve preferred GPL+ClassPath, but still OK. | 3851 | 57 | 2 | 2 | 3 | |
Pretties for you. t.co | 3945 | 78 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
Heading south for Spring Break. Next March in Melbourne! | 3768 | 11 | 0 | 2 | 1 | |
Check out the Signal Desktop beta from @whispersystems: t.co | 4490 | 101 | 3 | 0 | 6 | |
That feeling when you open a new class in your IDE, and its name is “State” | 3954 | 37 | 4 | 3 | 10 | |
@ftrain Atlas Shrugged is the one you want, it’s so thick, burns forever to keep you warm on a December day. | 443 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 3 | |
Astonishing that it’s so different even across the highly-porous US-Canadian border. | 3916 | 22 | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
Being a middle-aged white American is hazardous to your health; remarkable statistics: t.co | 4824 | 150 | 7 | 2 | 1 | |
Link for previous sneer at Bloomberg: t.co | 4540 | 72 | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
Bloomberg idiotically praises Apple for R&D spend of “only” 3.5%. Uh, look at the denominator? | 3877 | 45 | 2 | 1 | 8 | |
Hey, it’s my one-year Amazon anniversary. Hm, I should write something insightful but I’m kinda busy with this cloud stuff. | 3779 | 52 | 2 | 1 | 6 | |
@benadida Whatever I said was right. Unless it was wrong. | 169 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | |
Super-interesting piece on lambda & stream performance in Java8: t.co | 4021 | 175 | 7 | 3 | 19 | |
@sogrady @girltuesday Relevant to your new interests: t.co [I don’t think it’s changed since 2006.] | 312 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 3 | |
A preview portrait of the globally-warmed future: t.co | 4629 | 82 | 2 | 0 | 2 | |
Hunger Games flicks, in descending order of quality: 2, 3, 1, 4. Right? | 4257 | 63 | 0 | 7 | 1 | |
4977 | 196 | 4 | 0 | 5 | ||
Accidentally stumbled into the 25%-or-so of the Internet filled with Game of Thrones fan culture. OMG. | 3955 | 31 | 0 | 1 | 5 | |
So apparently the EPO (Euro Patent Office) is run by fascist assclowns - t.co | 6694 | 278 | 10 | 2 | 11 | |
Mockingjay 2: Meh. | 3747 | 25 | 0 | 2 | 1 | |
@bradfitz The past is unevenly distributed. | 348 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
Decent deal on Nexus 5x Google. But not for us Canadians. Dear Google: Not feeling thankful. | 4411 | 57 | 3 | 5 | 8 | |
I suppose the handwriting-analysis profession has fallen on hard times. | 3700 | 25 | 3 | 1 | 2 | |
Those of us working for big US tech companies but not in America are getting lots done today. | 5232 | 70 | 10 | 3 | 17 | |
Best seasonal piece this year BY FAR: t.co | 38328 | 1474 | 41 | 3 | 43 | |
How will we recognize the GOP Establishment when it shows up to stop Trump? Do they have special uniforms? | 4910 | 45 | 4 | 4 | 11 |
December 14, 2015
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