In the research I’ve been doing over the past few years into why ideas spread, I’ve found a few common characteristics of contagious ideas across mediums and centuries. The list below contains those characteristics, and while its still an evolving set, the vast majority of successful memes I’ve studied have had some (or all) of […]
After I first launched the Twitter psychological profiling tool TweetPsych, some of the most common feedback I got was that it was hard to understand the results. So I designed a new reporting mechanism and design to solve that problem. The new TweetPsych uses “meta dimensions” which are combination of related factors from the two […]
As you may or may not know, I’ve been working on a book for a while. Well, its finally done and in-stock on Amazon and should be in stores this week. The whole process has been very exciting and a lot of work (I had a ton of help from a great editor, Laurel as […]
One of the most ubiquitous and disruptive websites to emerge in the last 10 years is Craigslist. Impacting industries from real estate, news paper classifieds, careers and auctions the site has for the most part remained entirely free to use. A great example of organic, word-of-mouth spread I’ve always been interested in how the meme […]
Want more clicks? My new data suggests that you should Tweet your links in afternoons, evenings and on weekends. Continuing the study of Twitter clickthrough rates I started last week, I added over 100 more of the most followed Twitter accounts to my database and indexed click data on over 20,000 bit.ly links Tweeted by […]
Tweet Much? Don’t Expect a High CTR. New data I’ve been working on seems to indicate that the more frequently you Tweet links, the fewer clicks you’ll get. I’ve been working towards a statistical model of how an individual makes a decision to ReTweet a specific Tweet and in that process, I came across an […]
I wrote a little while ago about how Twitter’s plans to mangle ReTweets with its Project ReTweet, and the danger that poses to the crowd-invented functionality. After having several conversations on the topic and wondering what we could to do save ReTweets, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is make […]
We love talking and speculating about dreams, and Twitter is the perfect place to discuss those subconscious thoughts, images and emotions. Dr. TweetDreams takes those Twitter dream musings and tells you what they mean. DrTweetDreams.com analyzes the elements of your Tweeted dreams to see what they mean for your past, present and future. Type your […]
When marketers think about “going viral,” they think about creating infectious content and getting it in front of the right people. And while that’s a great place to start, contagious design can also go a long way to help. Here’s 7 things to think about when designing a blog or site for maximum viral effect. […]
After putting together the most recent version of my “Science of ReTweets” presentation and putting it up on Slideshare, I got a lot of great feedback, including that it’s a little hard to understand without my explanations along with each slide. So I pulled all the data together (including some I’ve never published on this […]