When we started our researches on Twitter propagation we, as many others, used the well known Twapperkeeper service in order to save and download Tweets. Later we moved toward an ad hoc solution which was highly customised for our specific needs and infrastructure.
Recently due to a change in Twitter policy Twapperkeeper removed the export and download capability, leaving many researchers without an important research tool.
We then decided to share a simplified version of our system that should be able to run properly on many systems. You can download it from the tools page. The attached manual should explain everything you need to know to install and use the system.
Please note that this is an alpha version so please give us feedback or request for new functions.
We really hope this will help many researchers looking for a (relatively) simple to installa alternative to Twapperkeeper.
Mese: marzo 2011
#rifarelitalia dynamic ReTweet Chain
[Italian]
“Per Rifare l’Italia” was a conference hold in the Italian Lower Chamber (Campera dei Deputati) on Feb. 2 2011, organised by Telecom Italia – Working Capital about the strategies to bring a higher level of innovation in Italy (the hashtag sound like “rebuilding Italy). Keynote speaker was Edmund S. Phelps (winner of the 2006 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel), You can read the full transcript of his speech here.
Following the official hashtag we have done this short animation that clearly show the dynamic evolution of the ReTweets related to the event. It is interesting to point out that while during the conference there was a good level of activity (most due to a numbers of blogger live tweetting the event) very few interactions happens during the afternoon.
From a technical poing of view the video (made with Gephi) shows only the ReTweet chains of the messages with the #rifarelitalia official hashtag. Both size and colour of the nodes indicate the Degree centrality of the node.
[English Version]
“Per Rifare l’Italia”, evento organizzato il 2 Febbraio 2011 da Telecom Italia presso la Camera dei Deputati, ha visto la partecipazione del premio Nobel per l’economia Edmund S. Phelps. La visualizzazione che qui proponiamo – basata sui tweet contenenti l’hashtag ufficiale #rifarelitalia – mostra le dinamiche di propagazione dei messaggi durante l’evento (decisamente elevate) e – al tempo stesso – come al termine dell’evento gran parte della propagazione in rete tenda ad esaurirsi.
Da un punto di vista tecnico il video – realizzato con Gephi – mostra la rete dei ReTweet (l’aggiustamento è dei nodi è ottenuto tramite l’applicazione di un Force Atlas Layout) su intervalli temporali di un’ora. Sia le dimensioni che l’intensità di colore dei nodi sono calcolare sulla base della degree centrality del nodo stesso.