What domains in #afl related tweets get the most RT@ ReTweets?

This entry was posted by Laura on Thursday, 19 August, 2010 at

This post is a follow up to What #afl related hashtags get the most RT @ ReTweets? and Want to be Retweeted? Add URLs to Your Tweets!. This post looks at the what domains get the most retweets in tweets related to the AFL. It borrows the methodology (and assumptions) from the previous post with two major differences. First, the tweet collection had 10,412 total tweets instead of 8,523 at the start. (More recent tweets and more tweets.) Second, a new tool was needed to lengthen short urls. The tool that was used was Long URL please, a FireFox extension. Short links were copy pasted from Excel to a draft document, urls were lengthened and then pasted back. (When URLs were not lengthened, they were manually visited to get the real url.)

That out of the way, there 10,412 total tweets that could be examined. The list of keywords used can be found at using my raw data. Duplicate Tweets were removed bringing the total to 6,313 unique tweets. Tweets that did not include a url were removed. This brought the Tweet total down to 2,892 tweets. (About 46% of AFL related Tweets include a URL. This compares to 52% of AFL related Tweets with #hashtags.) There were 2,941 urls in these Tweets, with 2,582 unique urls in these Tweets. Of these, there were 623 unique domains. For all AFL related Tweets with urls, the following domains were the most popular:

Domains Count
http://afl.com.au 248
http://foxsports.com.au 140
http://heraldsun.com.au 115
http://au.sport.yahoo.com 112
http://abc.net.au 101
http://aflfeeds.com 67
http://twitpic.com 67
http://sportal.com.au 65
http://couriermail.com.au 64
http://news.aflspace.com 60
http://news.google.com 51
http://twitter.com 49
http://facebook.com 47
http://youtube.com 41
http://feedproxy.google.com 37
http://portadelaidefc.com.au 36
http://theage.com.au 34
http://skynews.com.au 32
http://bigpondnews.com 27
http://essendonfc.com.au 26
http://sportsnewsodds.com 26
http://yfrog.com 25
http://askbiography.com 24
http://sydneyswans.com.au 23
http://tweetphoto.com 21
http://adelaidenow.com.au 19
http://news.smh.com.au 19
http://saints.com.au 19
http://twitlonger.com 19
http://footyheads.com.au 18
http://melbournefc.com.au 18
http://sports.espn.go.com 18
http://contestedfooty.com 17
http://hawthornfc.com.au 17
http://thebigtip.com.au 17
http://themonk.com.au 15
http://feeds.feedburner.com 14
http://feeds.theroar.com.au 14
http://https: 14
http://flickr.com 13
http://oohja.com 13
http://rttf.posterous.com 13
http://topikality.com 13
http://yoursupercoachcoach.com 13
http://foursquare.com 12
http://mashable.com 12
http://racingandsports.com.au 12
http://theaustralian.com.au 12
http://3aw.com.au 11
http://dailymail.co.uk 11
http://3ba.com.au 10
http://blog.aflcio.org 10
http://goldcoastfc.com.au 10
http://huffingtonpost.com 10
http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au 10

Of the Tweets with urls, only 342 of them were ReTweets. That means about 5% of AFL related ReTweets contain domains. (Compare that to ReTweets containing #hashtags: 8%.) There were 150 domains mentioned Amongst those, the following domains were the most popular:

Domains Count
http://twitpic.com 23
http://essendonfc.com.au 17
http://heraldsun.com.au 15
http://sydneyswans.com.au 13
http://hawthornfc.com.au 10
http://youtube.com 10
http://twitlonger.com 9
http://afl.com.au 8
http://twitter.com 8
http://feeds.feedburner.com 7
http://mashable.com 7
http://saints.com.au 7
http://feedproxy.google.com 6
http://tweetphoto.com 6
http://3aw.com.au 5
http://blog.aflcio.org 5
http://aflpablog.com.au 4
http://facebook.com 4
http://flickr.com 4
http://melbournefc.com.au 4
http://patdollard.com 4
http://portadelaidefc.com.au 4
http://thebigtip.com.au 4
http://yfrog.com 4
http://afc.com.au 3
http://dailymail.co.uk 3
http://geelongadvertiser.com.au 3
http://goldcoastfc.com.au 3
http://kangaroos.com.au 3
http://skynews.com.au 3
http://sportsnewsfirst.com.au 3
http://abc.net.au 2
http://bigfooty.com 2
http://community.thisisplymouth.co.uk 2
http://diamondkpartypeople.blogspot.com 2
http://dreamteam2010.org 2
http://images.slatterymedia.com 2
http://live.tech45.eu 2
http://mtv.com 2
http://myloc.me 2
http://rttf.posterous.com 2
http://theage.com.au 2
http://videos.onsmash.com 2
http://votesmart.com.au 2
http://watoday.com.au 2

The domains that are ReTweeted are interesting. It is really easy to link spam on Twitter and some people and organizations do. If you look at some accounts, they post view TwitterFeed. Beyond that, you can tell when looking at a URL list that automated link posting is happening because the account may be using a URL shortener that isn’t as popular and the URLs tend to follow a sequence. The AFL and various news services put out URLs and they just aren’t getting ReTweeted at the same rate that they are getting posted. What is getting ReTweeted? People’s pictures and club related links.

Looking at both the domain list and the Domain ReTweet list, one thing that stands out for me is the lack of Wikipedia links. Wikipedia ranks really high on Google and other search engines. The AFL related content is highly ranked. The AFL articles are often really, really, really good and they are updated frequently. They can be really useful when looking for historical information. Thus, I’m surprised that there were only 3 references to Wikipedia. What gives? Why isn’t Wikipedia being cited more?

Moving on, 488 accounts were mentioned in the 343 ReTweets with URLs. The following table gives an idea as to who the most popular mentions were:

Mentioned Count
@essendon_fc 22
@sydneyswans 20
@hawthornfc 12
@stkildafc 12
@AFL 11
@AFLPA 10
@AFLCIO 8
@superfooty 8
@Footyfree 7
@RTTF_AU 7
@mashable 6
@3AW693 5
@adelaide_fc 5
@blackpolitics 5
@Collingwood_FC 5
@StevenBaker10 5
@DJPANIIC 4
@GoldCoastFC 4
@heraldsun 4
@PAFCNews 4
@PatDollard 4
@watoday 4
@antonKart 3
@Carlton_FC 3
@DemonsHQ 3
@iamdiddy 3
@mydogateart 3
@myfabolouslife 3
@northkangaroos 3
@redcafesd 3
@reggie_bush 3
@ruanji 3
@Sportsnewsfirst 3
@TeamHippo 3

That Essendon and Sydney were amongst the most mentioned doesn’t come as a surprise: Their domains were highly ranked. What is a bit surprising that the Blues aren’t highly ranked; they ranked highly for mentions with #hashtags. St. Kilda ranked highly on both lists. I half want to attribute this to the idea that their audience may be more Twitter savvy than other clubs’s fans. I’d have thought players might have been higher on this list but they really don’t appear to be a factor. This may suggest that players are not Tweeting urls or that content isn’t what their fans are interested in.

The lesson of these two posts is that if you want your AFL related tweets reposted, be partisan in your support and link to official club content that the news services haven’t yet written about yet.

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  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    It would be interesting to see if St Kilda fans were indeed more Twitter-savvy!

    On that account, Essendon and Sydney are self-explanatory, as they have been for months.

    Great lesson:

    “The lesson of these two posts is that if you want your AFL related tweets reposted, be partisan in your support and link to official club content that the news services haven’t yet written about yet.”

    Two examples of partisan sources were BlackPolitics and Anton Kart.

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