Social Networks for Mining: Professional Twitter ?

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 21, 2009

Social Networks for Mining: Professional Twitter ?

Recently more and social networking pundits write about the way social networks can be used by business to enhance their operations. However, I want to pinpoint that despite tremendous growth of the Internet, a considerable part of businessmen know very little how to exploit the advantages offered by it. In most cases this depends on the abilities of key corporate management to streamline IT divisions in their entities. When I started working in mining industry I fully discovered all benefits of global knowledge sharing; in some time I offered some pieces of advice to my fellow miners: ASIA MINING – Practical Hints and Asia Mining: Helpful Hints No.2 — Mineral Education

That was the basic reason WHY I decided to explore Twitter among other social networks and think about its possible business applications. What is exceptionally good with Twitter, as compared to its peers, – existence the ability that is exclusively peculiar to it: sending real-time messages via text (SMS) via cell phones without Internet connection. This opens tremendous opportunities to all types of businesses that rely on real-time accurate data.

My one-month trial confirms that Twitter is in its infancy as to business applications, so I would like to share my opinion as to the future development. Recent news stories about Twitter plans for e-commerce show one side of monetizing, that can be used to its full extent. However, there are some other points that IMHO are worth considering. As I am currently working in mining, this is related to that industry, however, it can be easily adapted to any other type.

Twitter experience shows that the idea of unifying globally millions of people in one network is very feasible. This network, as opposed to the peers is characterized by concise real-time messaging. Quite naturally the next stage of it — is the establishment of global professional networks, that shall look like (for the sake of example) www.twitter.com/professional/mining. These networks may provide crucial and timely operational data for the business in case – and I am pretty sure that many, if not all, major business companies shall subscribe to it. As an example, financial agencies may provide stock quotes, miners – information on metals and minerals prices in various spots of the world, etc. From financial point of view creation of such network would not require big investments; most of the money will go into adaptation of existing software platform and for running of operations.

Another important issue that characterizes Twitter – is the ability to segment and classify data by hashtag usage. Thus, any user can easily find the subject that is needed in a very fast way. Of course, using Google, Bing or other search engine would provide with a lot, but in case of professional network the quality of data mining would be much higher. This leads to a very important feature of the proposed professional network: information database. In my one-month trial I attempted to segment news information (on a very limited basis). Let me show for those readers that know a little about Twitter. If you are already registered Twitter user – you can make use of third-party Twitter applications – TweetDeck, Filttr and twitTangle – that enable filtering and sorting. If not: using http://search.twitter.com or www.hashtags.org enter one of the hashtags words – e.g. iron_ore and here are the results.

That means that you are getting news information that was hand-picked by an expert in the field and is: relevant, up to date, and serves your needs.

In case of mining the professional network (this in fact may be applied to any other network) the contents may be segmented into the following:

- – News

- – Countries – mining developments in various parts of the world

- - Mining Finance (which in turn may be segmented in a numbers of items, like M&A, Stocks, Investments, etc.)

- - Legal mining issues

- - Mining jobs

- - Machinery and equipment

- - Market (segmented to: prices, shipments, etc.)

- – Bulletin boards

This is not a full list, and can be expanded as required.

Summarizing all – establishing a professional network(s) is a natural step in the future of social media, the step that does not require big investment and will bring a lot of collaboration in specific industries.

Social Networks for Mining: Twitter Case Part II

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 16-17, 2009

Social Networks for Mining: Twitter Case Part II

Initial research shows that business use (at least on the mining side) is very limited and is in its infancy. Big business so far does not understand what is it and keep distant. Indeed, when you try to search ‘mining’ with twefellow.com you get 230 returns, however, most of them are associated with data mining; and only around 70 are real miners. I have made a simple research and here are the results. On Page 2 I summarized the most active miners-users; I have a list of members that relate themselves to providers of ‘mining news’ (only 12 of ALL Twitter users). And I have a shot summary for the most prominent Twitter-miners. Note that on each profile page I have stats on three top words used in their posts.

On Page 2 of presentation I have summarized the most active mining companies and individuals as of June 15, 2009. What is clear – that most of them started using Twitter a few months ago, and they are not very active with postings. Interesting to note the trend that 5 of 12 of the most active users represent global companies, mostly information providers. Big market players are here: Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals, but they are rather timid in activities.

Summarizing this initial research we may point to the following:

1) Mining companies practically are not using Twitter for any purpose

2) The most active are international information providers

3) Twitter-miners do not use hashtags in the right way – that means that information, provided by them is not segmented

About this I shall talk about in my further posts, alongside with discussion of my Twitter trial and some suggestions for monetizing.

The scope of the trial was to test options for usage of Twitter in mining industry. I made the following assumptions:

1) My posts shall be limited to current news: I am following about 90 different mining news sources

2) I would not participate in any discussions

3) To test user reaction with a couple of polls

4) Try to segment news stories according the their contents

So, here is a bit of stats (as of June 17):

Time frame: May 17 – June 17

Comparison with the most active miners:

This shows that I found myself among the leading Twitter mining professionals and with the time going on I may attract more attention.

Hashtags in Twitter are very good to categorize and segment all entries. This is a very good tool to search for relevant information. I used a limited number of major hashtags:

#global_mining – everything associated with mining – 1,673

#mining – general news – 853

#mining_finance – everything related to M&A, financing, mining stocks, etc. – 691

Twitter is very good to follow the news, so I introduced #Mining_Quakes – new hashtag for events that shake the mining community. However, no-one beside me used it.

Remembering that Twitter is mostly used by ‘young adults’ I had no illusions that they would endure following mining news. However, strange as it is – I managed to have 199 followers. Of course about 1/3 of them have no relation to mining, but I consider this as a good result.

In a while I got some RT (re-Tweets) by users, including by Yahoo News.

I noticed earlier that my effort with polls was abortive – very few people answered – that shows a tendency in Twitter – WATCH.

So, basically, that sums the trial experiment – in my next post I want to make some suggestions as to how I see development of Twitter for various industries and attaining some monetizing.

Social Networks for Mining: Twitter Case Part I

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 15, 2009

Social Networks for Mining: Twitter Case Part I

Recent upsurge in social media (some people call it “social E-ruption”) cannot be ignored by business. A very good example of what is going on is a simple fact: Googling the “business and social media” returns 231,000,000 results. This is a real ocean of information and of course an average businessman is lost here. Moreover, when you start reading the most prominent publications, like International Data Group CIO.com, Information Week, PC World, Marketwire releases, and more specialized: Mashable , GigaOm and others – you will be overwhelmed with abundance of information on zillions of social networks. However, one of the most intricate issues in all media is – monetization – or how to get money from all this activity. There are many good posts and news pieces that advise businesses on WHAT and HOW, but as a matter of fact the essence of all advice is: keep and develop contacts.

Nowadays almost everyone uses social media, and the most striking example is President Obama. In the last few days we have read about success of Dell, and every day there is some news about successful use of Twitter in job finding, medicine, etc. Consequently, upon reading a lot about ‘socializing’ I decided to go for a trial with one of the networks and see how this can be used for business. In all my business tenures I have learned that one of the most attractive business models lies in examining cross-industries, finding and using the opportunities. As an example, a couple of years ago there was (and I guess still is) an acute need for the lawyers that understand international business models, investment banking and some specific industry (e.g. telecommunications). So, basically, I consider myself to be in a position where I may make some general type of judgments – with my background in information research, telecommunications, investment banking and mining. I am not affiliated (at this time) with any of social networks, so I am not biased in my choices.

I was really impressed with the news of Twitter, so I made my choice and started my trial on May 17 with this network. The goal is – to ascertain – whether Twitter, being a representative of social media, is capable of serving the needs of business community, in my case – mining.

First of all, I found that majority of businessmen know very little, if nothing, about Twitter. A very good description is made in one of the recent press-releases: “Twitter is an announcement system, where users post a short message called a “tweet”. The tweet can be a simple description of what they are eating, where they are going, website links and photos. Users “follow” other users on Twitter and receive a real-time stream of announcements. As each user follows a new user, they can “tweet” their new following, again creating a viral effect. Companies are using Twitter to post news and announcements, using the medium to promote their marketing messages. “

A concise definition is on Quantcast Web-site: “Twitter.com is a top 50 site that reaches over 22 million U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a young adult, slightly more female than male audience. The typical visitor reads Perez Hilton, subscribes to Entertainment Weekly, and visits tennayalayouts.com. “

So, the question: would this service that ‘attracts a young adult’ have some attraction for rough and experienced miners all over the world? Probably YES, but let me explain what I have found.

First, and what surprised me, is the fact that was recently made public: substantial inactivity of users. Only 10% of Twitter users generate 90% of Tweets, that means that the majority prefer to watch and read. This was brilliantly illustrated by a couple of polls that I have made. Of course, that means nothing, as compared to the total number of users, but I guess, this is good representation of general trend. Please, notice a number of visitors and number of voters.

More to follow: analysis, results