the blog

We apologize for the software drama you’ve been experiencing lately. We’re taking a few hours today to smooth out the system, during which time the site will be inaccessible.

Many of you had been bothered by time outs and inconsistent tagging, today’s work will eliminate those headaches. We apologize for yanking the site at the last minute, but we thought this would give us the best chance to deploy a major fix before the holidays and not throw users during traditional business hours.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me by email directly: adam at looxii.com or reach out via Twitter.

Autotags are here and they’re awesome. Now Looxii users can tell our robots to be on the lookout for certain terms and apply a tag whenever that term is mentioned.

It’s easy to set up.

You can now filter and find mentions on your own terms. Spicy!

Sign up to try autotags and all of the other rad stuff Looxii has to offer.

The recent improvements to our Twitter offering have overshadowed some of the other cool stuff we’ve been working on. One big bonus our users will find is better Blog data. We’ve refined our sources to give Looxii users access to quality blog data (read: less spam) and reader comments.

Just another step in helping our customers achieve social media world domination.

In other world domination news (chicken edition), our new blog search tipped us off to some HUGE plans for The Gambler:

BCorp to grow Kenny Rogers [Roasters, not the man] in China

If you’ve never seen it, be sure to check out our old, but very poignant, report on Kenny Rogers Roasters.

In this two part series we present our take on the state of historical data for social media monitoring providers and why historical data might not matter anyway.

In part 1 we talked about the state of historical data and the technical, legal and financial implications involved; now we’re going to talk about why you might not want to give a hoot about old tweets.

Historical social media data may be of value for some large brands or academic research, but if you’re starting from square one on your campaign it would be wise to remember the following if you think you need historical social media data (especially before you pony up any cash for said data):

The history of social media is a very, very short one.

This is the most obvious reason: social media haven’t been around that long at all. While old social media data from way back in 2008 may have some value for today’s social media campaign, you’re probably fine to make today your baseline and power ahead.

Your social media campaign will be focused on the now.

You’re more likely to make history by putting a fresh plan together and executing it, rather than pouring over hundreds of thousands of old tweets, blog posts and YouTube videos.

You can learn a lot in a short amount of time.

Devoting a few weeks to listening before or while developing your campaign is time well spent. Listening to current, relevant conversations in the weeks leading up to your launch will help you develop an appropriate tone and a fluid content strategy.

Own your, uh, own history.

Listening, aggregating and analyzing social media data is a vital part of a good campaign. You might not know this, but there are tons of services out there that will find and store all of your relevant social media data. When you have a listening solution as a part of your strategy/campaign, you have data that will be the foundation for case studies and help inform future work.

Conclusion

Starting a social media campaign takes a lot of effort and planning. Historical social media data might not be worth the time, cost and trouble if you’re trying to win clients or get your brand into the social space. Research is a key part to devising a successful social media strategy, but you don’t have to dig too deep to get meaningful, actionable insights.

What are your thoughts? Have you ever found value in purchasing access to historical social media data?

photo cred to Flickr user rickharris

In this two-part series we present our take on the state of historical data for social media monitoring providers and why historical data might not matter anyway.

I speak to many people about the monitoring and analysis of social media data. The question of historical data is almost always a part of those conversations. Most specifically, people will ask “Do you, Looxii, offer historical social media data?”

What I take them to mean is “If I create a Looxii search for ‘Brand X’ today, will I be able to see what people were saying about ‘Brand X’ in Q1 of 2009 on Twitter?” We don’t offer much historical data out of the gate and the reason is simple: we just can’t.

Certain sources that we work with, like Twitter and Facebook, set limits on the amount of historical data we can retrieve when we first save a search. That constraint is built into the terms of service for all commercial services using their (Twitter and Facebook) APIs.

We do provide access to a lot of data sources and we store every mention as soon as a search is saved, for as long as a customer is our customer. If you’re searching for “Brand X” with Looxii right now that data will be available to you years later, provided your checks don’t bounce.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. Products that do offer access to comprehensive historical data at the start of a monitoring engagement have most likely negotiated for custom terms of service and possess the serious backend cojones to store all of Twitter (which is at about a billion tweets a week) or they are working with an indexing service (3rd-party cojones).

if you want serious historical data… you better have some serious dough

Regardless, providing historical data equates to a major commitment of technological and/or financial resources. For the end user that means if you want serious historical data on day one of your campaign, you better have some serious dough.

Other services offer affordable access to historical data, but unless they follow the formula above, the best you’re going to get is a relatively tiny, and sometimes irrelevant, sample.

When the time comes to woo a client or launch a campaign, does historical social media data really matter? I would venture to say most of the time it absolutely doesn’t and I’m going to tell you why in part 2…

Photo creds to Flickr users rafaelmarquez and tpholland

This is just a little anecdote about something I, and many people, do often: make a purchase because of something someone says on the internet(s). This particular instance involves myself, a trusted social media colleague, three tweets and a $1.99 transaction. Here’s the basic breakdown…

#1 I see this:

#2 So I sez:

#3 And then I see this:

#4 Sold!

I respect Justin’s opinion and he was right: it’s a great product, it’s the exact opposite of suck and it met a basic need I had for a Twitter app that supports multiple accounts. It also has some UI wow that I wasn’t expecting. I felt like I got an amazing deal for $1.99 and I’m still likely to listen, and buy, when my friends talk.

This is what so many businesses ideally want social media to do for them. The goal is to control the hearts, minds and, ultimately, mouths of your friends, leveraging trust among followers to make sales.

There’s no fixed equation for making this happen and targeting influencers is not really the best strategy. While influence scores and follower counts are worthwhile metrics, obsessing over black-boxed numbers can distract from what matters most: having a good product and an engaging brand. People will talk and their friends will buy as long as companies make cool stuff and know how to communicate effectively.

One of the most notable additions to our platform has been Premium Twitter Search. Looxii users now have affordable access to the vaunted Twitter Firehose. That means once you set up a search, we’re able to get every mention on Twitter from the moment you click save and on. Never miss a tweet!

It also means that we’re able to index the good stuff: user locations, follower/following counts, RTs. That means more valuable reporting right out of the box, no need to dig for user insights.

So to recap, Twitter Premium Search gets you comprehensive Twitter monitoring, bonus user stats and tasty, data-enriched reports. And it’s only 25¢ for every 1,000 tweets. What a bargain! Try it free for 14-days when you sign up for a trial account.

Image elements borrowed from Pastalane

It’s been a long time baking in the code oven, but we’re happy to announce that we’ve launched our newer, more mature and refined version of Looxii.

So what’s new? Over the past year we’ve taken our customers’ comments, suggestions and actions into account to substantially refine the app’s workflow.

We’ve consolidated our feed and graph pages into one Report page so visual and qualitative analysis happen in the same place.

Smaller actions have been confined to modal windows to reduce clutter and large amounts of information are now more manageable in compact lists.

Most importantly, we’ve unified the look of app. Purpose and function transcends pages, glassy buttons with clear functions are everywhere so users never feel lost or have to guess.

Beyond the look, we’ve restructured what’s happening under the hood to give the user a quicker, more responsive app. We’ve also added new features and improved existing features to give users access to better data sets and analytical tools.

All you need to do is pick a plan and sign up to give it a spin.

Looxii Dashboard

Looxii Feed Items

Whether it’s Kenny Rogers-related or novel meatwiches, it should come as no surprise that we’re obsessed with topics of interest in the (social media) world of fast food. We’ve been watching “taco bell” on social media for a while.

So when this latest flap challenged us to redefine what we conceive of as “meat,” Looxii was listening. Unfortunately we’re too busy to actually analyze the content. Here then are 9,413 tweets about Taco Bell from last week. We feel like you’ll know better what to do with 3.1Mbs of delicious discourse. Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD: 3.1Mbs of Taco Bell mentions on Twitter, 1/24-1/31/2011

photo cred to flickr user merfam

We’re not saying we’re Social Media Gurus, but we have spent a lot of time working in and with social media. One global trend we’ve noticed is that people will usually mention brands for three very distinct reasons:

They love it

They hate it

It’s just a part of their daily routine

While these motives to mention aren’t mutually exclusive, they provide a means to assess business practices. Positive mentions might validate a particular approach to customer service, while negative mentions might provide insights into how a business might improve customer service or sales. In the case of the casual mention, businesses might find evidence to justify innovative promotions like check-in specials.