In october and november of 2011, I posted 4 handpicked links every weekday at 4pm, dutch time, and called it '4 at 4'. In this series of posts I share some of the things I've learned: What worked, what didn't. I have about 5000 followers, and on average each link got 25 clicks.

When I started '4 at 4', I sent out the 4 tweets with one minute between them, so on 16:00, 16:01, 16:02 and 16:03. I realized then that people might miss a tweet, because they would be looking at the interesting content of the previous one. So I changed this to an interval of 2 minutes, already after a few days.

Here's a chart that shows the number of clicks by sequence number, 'first' being the tweet sent out at 16:00, 'second' the one at 16:02, etc. The first one clearly got far more clicks than the second one, almost double!

I'm now looking at these statistics for the first time, but I wished I'd done this earlier. My hunch was always that 2 minutes would be enough time for people to return to the twitter timeline, and see the other links. Clearly not. It would have been better to spread them out more. Which of course would lessen the '4 at 4' theme..

Takeaways

- People need time to visit a link. If you're sending out multiple tweets, space them well. Two minutes is not enough. They will miss your next tweet.

- If you can't or don't want to space them so far apart, post your most interesting content first. It will get the most clicks. Remember: Shoot your biggest gun first.

- Most important: Look at the damn analytics data as soon as you can! Reality rarely conforms itself to your hunch.

 

In october and november of 2011, I posted 4 handpicked links every weekday at 4pm, dutch time, and called it '4 at 4'. In this series of posts I share some of the things I've learned: What worked, what didn't. I have about 5000 followers, and on average each link got 25 clicks.

Top performers

These are the top 10 tweets, based on the number of clicks they received. The top 1 got 248 clicks.

Dit filmpje moet je zien. 3D objecten plaatsen in bestaande foto's. Mindblowing+1. http://bit.ly/pljolQ #4at4

Voor de liefhebbers. Stekkerdoos vermomd als varkentje. Schattig op een bizarre manier. http://bit.ly/q7KES4 #4at4

Dat je even denkt: Wow. Foto's van Shanghai in 1990 en 2010. Gaat best hard daar. http://bit.ly/qXIFUJ #4at4

Fun game: Shape letters and see how well you did. Are you a Font designer? http://bit.ly/uvksKO #4at4

Voor als je daar van houdt. Maak een iPhone case met je Instagram foto's er op. http://bit.ly/mZy98S #4at4

Testing the intuition of Cristiano Ronaldo - can he score in the dark? Amazing. http://bit.ly/rpNow8 #4at4

Maf. Wereldrecords hardlopen liggen op een rechte lijn, in log-log plot. Check:  http://bit.ly/paF8Hg #4at4

Blijft leuk: Kinderfoto's opnieuw maken. BACK TO THE FUTURE fotoreeks. http://bit.ly/n5vGwT #4at4

Ieks. Het gevaarlijkste wandelpad ter wereld is in Spanje: El Camino del Rey. Video: http://bit.ly/qLOE93 #4at4

Hoe je reageert op een lift die stil blijft staan zegt veel over je persoonlijkheid. Infographic: http://bit.ly/uG7GLL #4at4

Bottom performers

These are the bottom 10 tweets, the lowest one, at the top, received only 2 clicks. My followers really didn't care about these.. 

Nice music video, featuring many colored pencils. Hudson - Against The Grain http://bit.ly/t7tuWX #4at4

Interesting part from Objectified where Jony Ives talks about Apple Design http://bit.ly/uskYoW #4at4

Red and green flags - Useful YC Application Checklist http://bit.ly/pIhKG2 (via @newsycombinator) #4at4

Interesting project by Danny Hillis - Engineering the 10 000-Year Clock http://bit.ly/sebyO1 #4at4

Airdrop Irrigation system harvests moisture out of the air. Smart. James Dyson Award winner http://bit.ly/s38XGA #4at4

Continuing the dancing theme. Quite amazing video 'Break ton Neck'. http://bit.ly/vOdws2 #4at4 #sycd

Odd. Typewriters, restored to working condition. As art pieces almost. Kasbah Mod http://bit.ly/seNlEj #4at4

Take your time and explore this Mind Lab to see how your brain processes visual cues. Very cool! http://bit.ly/w1Wtn7 #4at4 4

Memrise, http://bit.ly/rLDTq8 is een leuke manier om een taal te leren. Probeer de proefles Chinees  #4at4

Wonderful movie about Afghanistan. Without the violence. A side you don't see. http://bit.ly/rYx2t3 #4at4

The first obvious difference is of course that most of the top performers are in dutch, and most of the bottom performers are in English. My followers are mostly dutch. As an experiment I switched to English for most of the month of november, and I must say I did not expect this difference to be so strong: I expected most of my dutch followers to click on links in english tweets as much as those in dutch tweets. And that I expected my English followers to click and RT more. So English tweets should have gotten more clicks. But there clearly is a big difference: The net effect of expanding the audience to English-speakers, in my case, is negative. Here's a chart that shows this: The average number of clicks on the tweets, by language it was written in.

The other thing that strikes me is that most of the bottom performing ones contain texts that are either not immediately obvious to understand, or that are about an niche subject like typewriters, irrigation and Afghanistan. 

The third thing is that these bottom tweets contain words like 'nice', 'interesting', 'useful' and 'smart' which are probably not appealing. I did use words like 'wonderful' in cases, but they could not offset the unappealing content.

Takeaways

1. Writing in English is not always the best. You may get a higher total of clicks if you limit yourself to the native language of most of your followers.

2. Don't use unappealing words like 'interesting', 'useful' or 'smart'. 

3. Nothing beats cool, fun, shareworthy content, with a broad appeal. If it's good, it will get RTs and will spread.  

Do you have other thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

 

Iemand die net een iPad had gekocht vroeg me laatst een lijstje te maken van de apps die ik gebruik. Here goes. Ik ben te lui om de iTunes linkjes op te zoeken, dat moet je zelf maar even doen.

• Pages
  Standaard van Apple, ik vind het handig om wat stukjes te kunnen opschrijven. Het voldoet.
• Twitter
  De standaard app van Twitter voldoet ook. Er zijn mooiere (Osfoora bijv) maar deze vind ik toch het meest praktisch.
• NU HD
  Mooie iPad versie van de nieuwssite.
• Garageband
  Heeft iets gadget-achtigs maar alleen daarom moet je hem al hebben. 
• iMovie
  Erg handige app waarmee snel filmpjes te monteren zijn. In het bijzonder met de iPad photo connection kit, waardoor je opnames van je iPhone via het kabeltje kan importeren. Must have. 
• Kindle
  Synchroon tussen al je devices inclusief Kindle. Dat wil je.
• Star Walk
  Uitermate coole app waarmee je buiten sterren kan kijken. Richt je iPad ten hemel en je ziet alle sterrebeelden en je kan de planeten makkelijk vinden. Zeker op vakantie is dit topvermaak.
• iNapkin
  Gebruik ik vaak om even snel een tekeningetje te maken om iets uit te leggen.
• Dropbox
  De manier om bestanden van en op je iPad te krijgen. Verplicht.
• The Elements
  Prachtige app om uren mee te spelen. Als je van scheikunde houdt. Leuke persoonlijke verhalen en anecdotes over ieder element uit de natuur. 
• Transfer
  Handig om foto's te verplaatsen tussen iPhone en iPad. Allebei op zelfde wifi netwerk en klaar, erg praktisch, bijvoorbeeld voor backup tijdens vakantie. 
• Photogene
  Een van de betere photo editing programma's, waarmee je redelijk subtiel dingen als kleur, contrast, draaiing etc kan aanpassen. 
• Brushes
  Ik heb een aantal tekenprogramma's maar deze vind ik het fijnst.
• WeatherPro HD
  Ook deze gebruik ik af en toe,vooral op vakantie. Handig om de temperatuur en buienradar van je huidige plek meteen te kunnen vinden.
• OmniOutliner
  Verreweg de duurste app die ik heb maar ook die ik het meest gebruik. Organiseer ideeën, lekker snel groepjes maken. Erg handig voor braindumps.
• Goodreader (toegevoegd)
  Erg handige pdf reader, met ingebouwde wifi connector om bestanden te uploaden naar je iPad. Handig! Ook voor pdf versies van bijvoorbeeld Scientific American etc.

En dan heb ik nog een heel zootje games, meer iets voor een aparte blog denk ik.

Uiteraard heb ik veel meer op de iPad staan maar dit zijn de apps die ik echt gebruik, in plaats van apps waarvan ik vind dat ik ze zou moeten gebruiken. Veel mensen zijn enthousiast over Flipboard en Zite als nieuws-apps, ik kan er nog niet echt in komen. 

Hopelijk helpt dit.

 

Van alle 1.23 miljoen Nederlandse twitteraccounts in de Twittergids database heb ik gekeken naar de aanmaakdatum. Dat levert onderstaande grafiek op. 

Zoals je kan zien was de echte exponentiele fase in 2009, sindsdien is de groei ongeveer lineair. Het afgelopen jaar nam het aantal accounts toe met ongeveer 55,000 per maand; in de maanden september en oktober nam dit iets toe toe 60,000 per maand. De groei is dus allesbehalve aan het verminderen.

Vragen? http://twitter.com/michielb

 

 

Ik heb de data genomen van de 1,23 miljoen Nederlandse twitter accounts uit de Twittergids database, en deze verdeeld naar aantal volgers. Hieronder zie je de grafiek. 

Je kan hier dus in zien dat ongeveer 20,000 accounts 1 volger hebben, 21,600 2 volgers, etc. Het maximum ligt bij 4 volgers. 

Het gemiddeld aantal volgers is 124. Ruim 273,000 accounts hebben meer dan 100 volgers, en 15,800 meer dan 1,000. 

 

With the old app, you could simply get a line '@aksie follows you' in the person's profile if they followed you. With the new app, this line is gone. 

But there is a workaround. Click the little 'Person' icon, that I've marked in the screenshot below.

Then you will get a dialogbox, with options to block, report for spam. But if that other person follows you, you will also get a 'Send direct message' button:

This extra option only shows up if they follow you. I know it's an ugly workaround, if you find a nicer way let me know! And I hope Twitter will make this like the way it was, with the textual indication.

 

I maintain a database plus website, called http://twittergids.nl. With it, I want to create a starting point for (beginning or seasoned) twitterers to find interesting people to follow. 

Over the past few years I haven't spent enough time on it, and now that I have time (see previous post 'Good bye') I'm improving it. The main problem has been to get the database complete and up to date. 

I've added some scripts to improve both the completeness and the freshness of the data over the past few weeks, and the size of the database increased from about 240,000 accounts to 950,000 dutch twitter accounts. The data is now also fresh, the goal is to have an average data-age of one day, which I sometimes reach if all works well. ;-)

Inspired by a SXSW talk I heard last year of the folks of Etsy, I followed their blogpost http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-measure-everything/ and installed Graphite on a server. I use Graphite in two ways

1. My code now sends measurements to the stats machine. Simply by adding a line I can now measure interesting numbers. For example: I strive to use the full rate limit that I have of 20,000 requests per hour. This is now simply a matter of inserting one line of code, logging the current value of rate_limit. So I now have a chart that shows me the rate limit status. If I don't empty it in an hour, my script is too slow. If it stays stuck, there is another problem. If it is weirdly bumpy, something else is going on. 

2. I run a couple of queries every 15 minutes to find out some info from the database. For example, the average age of the data for dutch tweeps. I want this to be less than one day, or 86400 seconds. Now that I have a chart, I can see if I reach this goal. And if not, I have information to tackle any issues that there are.

Here's a screenshot of my current dashboard. I've learned a lot from it, and continue to do so. Weird things, like 'How come this line goes down, it's supposed to go up', or 'Why is the system load so high for an hour?'. If you don't see this visually before you, with a chart, you're far less likely to act on it.

Once you start measuring, you start to see if your application behaves as you expect it to. I can highly recommend implementing this. Follow the blog post of Etsy, install graphite (it will take a few hours), implement measurements in your code and add some scripts to measure quality kpi's. It is well worth it. 

Today is the sad day that Steve Jobs died. I want to share a personal story about how his words, simple as they are, have motivated me recently.

I've watched his Stanford speech, which I will embed below, several times in the past year. But like most people who watch this, I merely loved it, and didn't act on it. Until this summer. When I was on holiday, I made a note in my iPhone, which is paraphrasing Steve, I think from the D8 interview.

Going to work should be motivated by a will to do something amazing, to build great products.

I realized that I wasn't doing anyone a service in my role at my employer. So after I got back from vacation and gathered enough courage, I handed in my resignation. Coincidentally, it was on the same day that Steve sent his famous letter to the board, informing them that he could no longer act as CEO of Apple.

And tonight my farewell party is planned. Coincidentally, on the very sad day that Steve has passed away. I hate saying good bye, so today is a good exercise in that.

Steve's words motivated me to take my decision. In that sense, he will live on, because my life is affected by him. And this is just one little story. I hope he will motivate you too. 

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

You should really watch his Stanford speech. Here it is. 

 

I’ve been playing with Google+ for a few days now, and find myself thinking: Is this going to be the platform? Are people going to flock to this social network, replacing Facebook and maybe Twitter?

While I was on my bike, riding in the dutch mountains (aka headwind), I thought of a way to look at this, by comparing this to other succesful sites and why they became succesful. I think the reason for the success of many online services is: they make things easier. Easier to communicate, to express yourself, to find things. Let’s look at a few carefully picked examples ;–)

• Flickr made it easier to share pictures. Before that time, most services were ‘closed’, in the sense that they assumed you didn’t want to share your pictures with the world. Flickr turned that around.
• Youtube made it easier to post a video online. Before Youtube, it was very, very hard to embed a video in a web page.
• Blogging software made it easier to publish.
• Facebook made it easier to share and communicate with your friends. Despite all the complaints many people have about the usability of their interface, it managed to attract 600 million members.
• Twitter made it easier to publish, even easier than blogging.
• eBay made it easier to buy and sell.

And easier can also mean cheaper.

• Skype makes it cheaper to communicate
• Whatsapp makes it cheaper to communicate

I could go on, I think, but you get the picture.

My concern with Google+ is: Does it make anything easier, or cheaper, in any way? So far, I’m not sure of that. I think in a sense Google+ makes sharing a bit harder, because it will require some extra brain cycles to determine who you want to share this with, because of the important concept of circles. You will share only with the current stream you’re looking at, by default. It requires a bit of thinking. And that is the opposite of easier.

On the other hand, sharing from an Android phone does become a lot easier. Take a picture, click share, destination Google+, give it a title, optionally change the circle to publish it to, and that’s pretty much it. And they have done a lot of really smart things in the interface to make working with Google+ easier than working with Facebook. Many menus are really well made, with mouseover dropdowns that requires only 1 final click.

So for me the question is: Do all these smart little things add up to more than enough to overcome the extra burden and complication of the circles concept. And especially the effort to switch over to Google+ from Facebook.