SoDash & Social Media Analytics

or why my life is sooo hard

Joe Halliwell // @joehalliwell

SoDash: the plucky underdog

  • Best coverage of social media services
  • Automatic message routing/filing
  • Realtime data and co-working support
  • Household name clients

How we get the data

  • Official APIs: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, Google+, Instagram...
  • Unofficial APIs: ReviewCentre, TripAdvisor, RSS...
  • Other aggregators: DataSift, Radian6, BOSS, GoogleAlerts
  • Scraping: Forums, Blogs, Guestbooks, everything else

Anatomy of a tweet

From http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=smedin 

{
	created_at: "Wed, 15 May 2013 07:39:04 +0000",
	from_user: "prettysimple",
	from_user_id: 17963713,
	from_user_id_str: "17963713",
	from_user_name: "James Coltham",
	geo: null,
	id: 334573630337982460,
	id_str: "334573630337982464",
	iso_language_code: "en",
	metadata: {
		result_type: "recent"
	},
	profile_image_url: "http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1469558027/Jim-retro-green_normal.jpg",
	profile_image_url_https: "https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1469558027/Jim-retro-green_normal.jpg",
	source: "Mobile Web (M5)", // Plus link
	text: "@LockhartL have fun and tweet lots! #smedin",
	to_user: "LockhartL",
	to_user_id: 110347158,
	to_user_id_str: "110347158",
	to_user_name: "Leah Lockhart",
	in_reply_to_status_id: 334572221941047300,
	in_reply_to_status_id_str: "334572221941047296"
};

API ≠ job done

  • No data standards, not even close
  • Byzantine architecture
  • Constant evolution
  • We're stuck with all that

Some of our data is missing

  • Historic data isn't there
  • Location data isn't there
  • No service level guarantees

Drowning in data

  • 400M tweets per day
  • 1B items of Facebook content per day
  • Technically challenging to store and query
  • Analysis tends to be quite superficial
  • More sophisticated analysis can be hard to interpret

Computers not read text good

  • Sentiment analysis is deceptive
  • Evaluating performance is hard
  • You might be looking for a needle in a haystack
  • Pas en Anglais? Bonne chance!

Who is your head of email?

  • Social media is cross-cutting
  • Workflow becoming more important
  • Routing becoming more important (we hope)

The end of free

  • Data is disappearing behind pay walls
  • Services need to earn their upkeep
  • Everyone needs a business model (even Twitter)

Interesting times

  • Being social is not optional
  • Massive opportunities across the ecosystem
  • Money is flowing
  • It's insanely cool

Thanks! Any questions?

Follow @sodash on Twitter!

We're looking for beta testers!