Surveying Our Landscape From Top to Bottom

Metrics and Social Web Services: Quantitative Evidence for their Use & Impact Surveying Our Landscape From Top To Bottom Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK UKOLN is supported by: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/eim-2011-07/ This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Acceptable Use Policy Recording this talk, taking photos, discussing the talk using Twitter, blogs, etc. is permitted but please try to minimise distractions to others. Twitter: #ukolneim Blog: Twitter: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/ @briankelly @ukwebfocus

You are free to: copy, share, adapt or re-mix; photograph, film or broadcast; blog, live-blog or post video of this presentation provided that: You attribute the work to its author and respect the rights and licences associated with its components. Idea from Cameron Neylon Slide Concept by Cameron Neylon, who has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights. This slide only CCZero . Social Media Icons adapted with permission from originals by Christopher Ross. Original images are available under GPL at: http://www.thisismyurl.com/free-downloads/15-free-speech-bubble-icons-for-popular-websites Off the record questions and comments should be flagged Evidence & comments

Services being considered: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, Technorati, Wikio & Slideshare

Twitter: Personal Trends
I thought I used Twitter regularly ever since signing up in March 2007.
Evidence from Tweetstats:
Significant use began in Jan 2008 (100+ tweets)
No use in Mar-Jun 2008
Reality:
Significant use began in Apr 2008 at MW 2008 conf
Needed community in order to gain benefits
Implications:
Our memories may be incorrect
Data may be wrong (due to Twitter downtime??)

Institutional Use of Twitter
Questions:
What can commercial social media analytics services tell us about institutional Use of Twitter?
What can we learn from the approaches the services take?
What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Can we / should we develop alternatives?

Social Media Analytic Summaries
Social media analytic summaries for Russell Group Universities
Outliers may be interesting

Peerindex Comparisons (1)
Peerindex’s ‘topic fingerprint’ for Oxford / Cambridge:
Similar profiles
Oxford covers news, politics & history
Cambridge covers technologies
Peerindex and Klout group comparisons for Russell Group Unis available (data used in this talk is available freely for reuse under CC0 licence)

Peerindex Comparisons (2)
Peerindex’s ‘topic fingerprint’ for:
@psychemedia (blue blob) & @mweller (grey outline)
Do such comparisons tell us anything useful? Example used of four established bloggers / Twitterers

Peerindex For Participants
Peerindex table of rankings for attendees. Is this:
A self-fulfilling echo-chamber / a clique?
Easily gamed (e.g. by signing up to service)?
Scenario 1 : Research funding determined by flawed metrics but Unis still headhunt researchers with valuable RAE scores Scenario 2 : Social Media metrics flawed but Unis headhunt marketing / outreach people with valuable scores Scenario 3 : “IMAGINE a world in which we are assigned a number that indicates how influential we are. This number would help determine whether you receive a job …It’s not science fiction. It’s happening to millions”

Slideshare: Personal Use
Steve Wheeler tweet on Aug 2010:
Ironically there were 15 people in my audience for this Web 3.0 slideshow but >12,000 people have since viewed it http://bit.ly/cPfjjP
In Dec 2010 blog post reported:
~16K views &1.5K embedded views
Blog post suggested:
Value of embeddable resources (Slideshare sets OERs free)
Ways of comparing value of experiences of 15 local audience & 22.8K (now) remote viewers

Slideshare at Events (1 of 2)
IWMW events used Slideshare since 2006.
Statistics show:
Overall nos of views (<1,000 live audience)
and suggest:
Potential for amplification of parallel sessions
Potential value of aggregation of slides
But does decline since 2008 peak indicate:
Slideshare is past it (use Slideboom, …)?
Viewing slides is passe
Benefits of longstanding availability?

Slideshare at Events (2 of 2)
Statistics of most popular slides suggest:
Popularity of non-HE speakers’ slides
Popularity of slides not in corporate house style
This has some positive correlation with experiences of local audience Could this inform selection of speakers in future?

Slideshare: Lessons
Lessons:
Benefits of providing embeddable resources to enhance access
Informing policy: encouraging workshop facilitators to upload their slides
Challenging orthodoxy: value of house style
Apparent decline in numbers may reflect longevity of availability of resources
Implications:
What can the evidence and reflections tell us about teaching and learning repositories?
Slideshare Premium account provides richer statistics (trend analysis?) indicates value of business intelligence for $19/month.

Metrics For Personal Blogs
Technorati gives authority & ranking for 1.2 M blogs
Authority measures blog's standing & influence on scale of 0-1000 (high good). Ranking given for Technorati Authority of all sites (low good)
Rank of 3,045 means top 0.2% of all blogs.
Technology rank of 376 (of 30,133) means top 1.2%
Metadata for use in comparison with similar blogs Top 3% of all blogs Top 13% of technology blogs Or top 0.2% of all blogs Top 1.3% of technology blogs Or blogs.ouseful.info

Metrics For Personal Blogs
For blogs with a “JISC” keyword:
MASHe:
Top 0.8%
Top 2% technology
JISC AM Team:
Top 6%
May be value in:
Comparisons (learning)
Aggregation (value of HE)
But …
Note usefulness of keywords Why the drop?

Wikio
Wikio also provides metrics for (registered) blogs
List of top technology blogs shown
MASHe also ranked highly but not listed as Technology blog (so 4 of top 100 blogs here!) Together with display of trends for ranking, nos. of posts, links and backlinks, OUseful had peak at #18 in Nov 2008 What happened from Jun-Sep 2010?

Discussion
Criticisms: Flawed Approaches
Blogs have variety of purposes so inappropriate to reduce to 1 dimension
Response:
A degree can be seen as I/2.1/2.2 or 3
Some blogs have similar purpose and can be compared
Criticisms: Technical
Results can be volatile & may be skewed by blog technologies; migration of blogs; …
Response:
Could improve
Not significantly different from University rating?

Facebook Trends in UK HE
Development since 2007:
Blog post in 2007 reported 7 UK Unis on Facebook: Aston, Cardiff, Kent and the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan)
Jun 2008 survey reported on 8 most popular UK HE pages: OU top with 7,539 fans
Aug 2010 survey showed growth over 2 years (OU 380%; Cardiff 13,000% and others from 400-700%)
Result of decision to be pro-active in Fb marketing? If so, did it provide an ROI?

Facebook
Survey of Russell Group Unis Fb use:
Branded Fb URL: 7
Fb page: 7
Fb group: 1
No easily found Fb presence: 5
Neglected or unofficial Fb presence: 1
Range of ‘likes’: 2,047 – 137,395
Recent report on ‘ROI of Fb advertising’ suggested “ 1 Facebook fan = 20 additional visits to your website ”
How would we know if Cardiff‘s 20,035 Likes have provided an ROI?

YouTube Edu
Survey of YouTube Edu accounts:
1M+ views at Coventry Uni
Lack of comments
Example of stats available

iTunes Edu
Numeric data not readily obtained from iTunes Edu
Is this:
To be welcomed as an escape from bean-counting?
Of concern since gathering qualitative evidence can be costly?
Blog post analysed how services marketed: “ lots of content ”; “ free content ”; “ available on iPods ”; …

Conclusions
To conclude quantitative evidence:
Can inform policy decisions
Can influence individual decision-making
The data:
Needs to be gathered!
May be flawed and should be questioned
The data analysis:
May inform (and surprise)
May be flawed
But:
Links with value & financial ROI not yet established

Questions
Any questions or comments?

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Surveying Our Landscape From Top to Bottom

by Brian Kelly on Jul 06, 2011

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