#SeeTheMomentWhen Twitter Got a New CEO
The Twitterverse made many big announcements this week, and we have been watching everything unfold. On Monday, the social networking giant announced its appointment of co-founder, Jack Dorsey, as CEO. Twitter’s board of directors began the search back in June, after former chief executive, Dick Costello, stepped down.
With Dorsey now running Twitter on a permanent basis, there has been some discussion about leaving his other company, payments behemoth Square, behind. However, the most media attention seems to be on the former CEO, as Costello has taken on a new gig as a consultant for the hit HBO series Silicon Valley:
The next day, Twitter launched Moments.
Tagged as “the best of Twitter in an instant,” you can discover stories that are unfolding ONLY on Twitter simply by visiting the new Moments tab.
Although this was announced early in the morning on Tuesday, Moments saw their biggest media spike when musician Jack Johnson (not the one you’re probably thinking of) sent out this Tweet:
Moments? Idk Twitter… Let’s take a couple steps back and rethink this whole thing…
— Jack Johnson (@JackJackJohnson) October 7, 2015
The tweet sparked over 3,300 retweets, and created a huge spike in the Twitter Moments conversation volume:
Looking at the context behind this tweet, Jack questions why the company went forward with this move. Although Moments allow tweeters to stay on top of what’s being tweeted, it may divert people away from the platform. Offering summaries of what is happening Twitter may eliminate the need for people to constantly check their newsfeeds. Only time will tell.
Side note, the Moments lightning bolt looks strikingly similar to the Zignal Labs logo. So, we want to know—which one of us wears it better?
It’s Not Always About the Headliners
Zignal Labs may be headquartered in San Francisco, but we had plenty of representation in Austin during the festival’s opening weekend. Here are a few quick highlights of what we learned using Zignal Enterprise:
Since October 1st, the two-weekend festival has generated more than 96,000 mentions, the majority of which are coming from Twitter:
On the food front, people seem to be enjoying the smoked goodness from Stubbs BBQ…
And the Miller Lite stage was where the most noise was made, carrying 78% of the share of voice:
But in terms of who was performing on those stages? Drake has been making the most noise, with over 14,000 mentions since his set last weekend. He is followed by Halsey and The Strokes.
It is emerging bands like Twenty One Pilots that have found themselves spiking hard in mentions during and immediately following their set, garnering more mentions than headliners like the Foo Fighters:
Several times, these spikes went higher than headliners. The headliner is not always the one that will create the most buzz around an event. As we saw with The Buzz Agency and SunFest, underdogs can easily steal the show.
Microsoft Event
Devices, devices, DEVICES.
Forget the Apple Keynote for the time being, because Microsoft’s October 6 hardware event created a “magical experience” for anyone that was watching.
In less than two hours, Microsoft introduced a ton of new Windows 10 products, including their Surface Book notebook computer. This is their first full-fledged laptop, “pinning the company not only against Apple, but against its many computing partners who are trotting out their own fresh Windows 10 notebooks.” Unsurprisingly, the Surface is at the center of the Windows 10 event word cloud.
And who was providing the most Windows 10 event coverage? Tech blogs.
TechCrunch led as the most influential author around the event…
And, it was The Verge that was sending out the most popular tweets:
Our takeaway? Even though Microsoft is just as large of a tech giant as Apple, the Windows 10 event has yet to reach the same journalistic clout as any iProduct announcement. Our prediction? If Microsoft continues to have enormous product events like Apple, coverage of such will start to carry over into more mainstream media outlets.
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