While you can read Edelman India’s official release on the locally contextual announcement on the launch of BlogLevel and TweetLevel (Ver. 2.0), here are some behind-the-curtain experiences.
1. The infographic we have created to demonstrate the power these tools is mighty functional and focuses on content. Click on the thumbnail to see the complete, enlarged version of this info-packed infographic.
Of course, with static lists like this, ranks are bound to change. So, here’s the most obvious caveat – these are ranks that we gathered using TweetLevel and BlogLevel during the first week of July 2011.
2. Where I believe these tools really help is to be able to drill down specifically on Twitter and Blogs, unlike broader tools like Klout and Peerindex that take in a lot more sources to rank online influence. For example, most Bollywood celebs (with glorious exceptions like BigB) are predominantly active on Twitter since it is just so handy. That level of focus perhaps helps. As for BlogLevel, there are very few tools that help in ascertaining a score for blogs in general – so it is useful all the way.
3. We did contemplate if the title in the infographic is a bit too much hype. After all, the contents of the infographic are not ideally about the top online influencers in India. But, in way, they could be too – those blogs/bloggers listed there are indeed the top ones, given the universe we identified and the ranks provided by BlogLevel. And, considering that most Bollywood stars bring their offline influence into online tools like Twitter, we assume that the title is justified, at least to some extent. If you don’t think so, I do understand, however!
4. For the top bloggers, we contemplated several routes, but eventually decided to go with Amit Agarwal’s well curated list. His list is updated and also is one of the most visited destinations when people search for top blogs in India. So, it made sense to add the layer of Bloglevel intelligence over that list. We ran all the blogs listed by Amit Agarwal through Bloglevel and arrived at the top 10 blogs, top 10 group bogs and top 10 individual blogs. The kind of rankings that you see in the infographic may help you place your own blog’s BlogLevel score in perspective.
5. One of the first things we ran through TweetLevel, after the data that you see on the infographics, is a hashtag check for #here2help that was used during the Mumbai blasts, earlier this month. The level of buzz for this hashtag was obviously at its peak on July 13-14 and gradually subsided on 15th and 16th.
These are the top Twitter voices using and amplifying that hashtag. As you can see @b50 rules this chart and @sidin comes very close.
While the fact that the first 3 top shared links are about the Google Docs that was created as an emergency response, it is interesting to note the 4th most-shared link – a piece from FirstPost, Network18’s new online venture. The difference between this piece and other media links in the top shared links list is simply this – FirstPost’s piece was merely a information update; a collation of various helpful resources and numbers, done perhaps in real time while the tragedy was unfolding. Outlook‘s link (featuring at no. 8 – credited to PTI – is similar in nature but seems less detailed and hence the lower ranking, possibly).
In comparison, Times of India’s piece is a reflective update on how online help came to the rescue and was posted the next day.
6. We did check TweetLevel for other pointless hashtags too. Like #kalmadi. While Faking News’ post on tattooing Kalmadi’s body with CWG scam details (Ghajini-style…owing to his alleged dementia), interestingly, one of the 5 most frequently used words when talking about ‘kalmadi’ was ‘cartoon’.
7. The other pointless (or pointed, as the case may be) search trend – we searched for ‘dravid’ and 3 keywords related to Sachin (srt, sachin and tendulkar). The 2nd most frequently used word in connection with ‘dravid’ is ‘god’. This word, usually associated with Sachin, is not one of the frequently associated words with the 3 keywords we tried for Sachin. Interesting, that. Recent performance is all that matters, I suppose!
8. On a largely unconnected note, my music blog (Milliblog.com) gets a much better BlogLevel score than this blog – 44.5 vs. 38.5!