Without a Yard

Thought it might be informative to dust off ye olde bloge to share a quick & dirty summary of the twitter conversations that are happening this weekend regarding the G20 summit (& more often than not, the riots/vandalism that surrounded them).  Despite being smugly camped out in the east end, crazy stuff still managed to go down in my hood, & like many Torontonians I took to the webs to passive aggressively vent:

Overall, Twitter users commenting on the G20 reached 448 million, which will no doubt trickle to over 450 million by tomorrow:

A sample size of 500 most recent tweets referencing the G20 found less than 3% positive, 18% outright negative & a surprisingly large percentage, almost 80%, neutral. This bears true with a simple search reference-check, mainly descriptive comments about the weekend events:

This next stat is especially interesting, & we’ll see more of this trend in RT-momentum as live streaming breaking news becomes the norm on Twitter, & as more users experiment with actual live-streaming video capabilities on their mobile devices. With almost a third of all G20 tweets overall, the power of the “RT” can’t be ignored. For many this weekend, re-tweeted photos (Queen W/Spadina standoff), OHs (over-heard comments)/quotes & descriptions, flooded streams & instantaneously propelled one user’s note into a massive new audience:

And more often than not, that one user’s note that flooded other’s streams wasn’t coming from a high profile journo or media outlet. Only 2% of high authority twitter users were chiming in on the G20, which includes references in RTs:

& if there is any question whether the riot/vandalism overtook the media agenda/online user’s attention span…well, this is the graph of words associated with the G20, most often used ‘Spadina’/'Queen’/'Protester’/'Protest’ & CP24. Kudos vandals – you won the internet.

Big thanks to the Sysomos lads for building the tubes that makes all the pretty piecharts!