Ozzie Sport

The graph below compares the historical Australian Alexa rank for the official Essendon site and an Essendon Bombers fansite.  It confirms the idea that their traffic peaks during the season and slowly increases during the preseason.

The

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• Code Flirting and Greg Inglis: Rabbitohs and Essendon Fan Response Online

This is mostly for my own interest. Data for these sites is because I have a script to automatically fetch this information. Foursquare is when I have identified games. Alexa and Twitter are gotten daily. Facebook is every third day. Trying to determine a schedule for ebay.

Any thoughts? Are the results for the most popular and least popular teams who you would have predicted?

1. Alexa site Australian rank data was from February 14, 2011. The Australian rank was subtracted from 35,000 in order to award high ranking teams with more points.
2. Totals are based on total checkins to the NAB Cup games played on February 11, 2011.
3. Twitter totals are from February 14, 2011 and count total followers to the official team Twitter account.
4. Facebook totals are from the official fanpage. Data was gathered on February 13, 2011.
5. Ebay data is based on http://ozziesport.com/2011/02/australian-sport-on-ebay/ that post. When team info was not available, it was searched for on February 14, 2011.

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In a recent post, I talked about what I saw as the importance of the GWS Giants in developing a local fanbase.  This post is another that explores the geography of Australian Football League fandom as a function of geography.

This post is based on data gathered using the following methodology:

1. Develop a list of  AFL related Twitter accounts and sort them by team.  Remove all AFL accounts that cannot be connected to a team.
2. Get a lot of the followers for all those sport related Twitter accounts.   (This process takes a while.  I can only use one Twitter API code set.  This limits the number of calls I can make to something like 150 or 350 per hour.  For each of those individual calls, I can get information on one page of a account’s followers.  Each page consists of about 20 followers.  This means the whole run took about a week and it started on January 18.)
3. Cross reference User inputted locations to actual Australian city locations .
4. Combine all followers by sportinto one file.  Remove duplicate entries so that if, for example Person X follows  @stkildafc, and @zacd_6 Person X gets counted once for Australian Rules, not two times.
5. Count the total number of followers by AFL team and by city.
6. Combine the total number of followers by sport with all the cities in the electorate the city is from.  For this analysis, that data can be found at Australian city location to electorates .  This list was created using the official list of Australian polling places by electorate.  The following cities were left off the totals: Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra.  These cities were left off because they would skew the results as people that say they are living in Melbourne are actually probably living in a different suburb.  (The CBD of these centers is very tiny.  There are probably more people claiming to live in Melbourne on Twitter than actually living in Melbourne CBD proper.)  If a town is included in multiple electorates, it is counted in all those electorates: Brunswick and Brunswick East  are counted for both Melbourne and Wills.

The complete totals for the results above are available at Australian Twitter Sports Electorates Report. The raw data is too large to easily upload.  If you would like access to it, please leave a comment.

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By Laura Hale
December 25, 2010

A copy of this paper can be found in PDF form here along with the related appendix. This is a first draft of a paper. It should be readable on its own. This article will eventually end up as a chapter in my dissertation. Additional statistics about Greg Inglis and the social media community have been collected. Given the scope of the topic, it was not possible to integrate this data into the paper. Please leave a comment if you want that data.

There is a gentlemen’s agreement between the three major football codes in Australia that players will not be poached from one code to another. This agreement is referenced by O’Neill (2007), a former Australian Rugby Union CEO, who controversially broke during the period when rugby union transition from an amateur game to a professional one. The code poaching agreement was an underlying part of the shock in the international and Australian sport media during the winter of 2009 when Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau left the NRL for AFL expansion teams. (Pearce, 2009, July 30) (Sky Sports, 2009, October 20) (Gould, 2010) (Bradshaw, 2009, July 29) Some of the media coverage at the time implied that code poaching was intended as a publicity stunt (Bradshaw, 2009, July 29) to help build the fanbase amongst rugby league fans in a traditional rugby league stronghold.

During the winter of 2009, when a few prominent NRL players left, one player that was discussed, as another code switcher was Greg Inglis, a Melbourne Storm player, who was being actively courted by Essendon. (Gould, 2010, June 10) (Bradshaw, 2009, July 29) Nothing came of this talk during the winter. Subsequently, the Melbourne Storm went through a major salary cap controversy that resulted in the club forfeiting all their games during the 2010 season. The Melbourne Storm had to clear space to get back into compliance with the league’s salary cap. When the team wasn’t trying to keep Inglis in order to continue their tradition of winning, the team was trying to get rid of him to clear salary cap space. (Marshall, 2010, July 21) (Johns, 2010, April 26) In November 2010, it looked like Inglis was going to move to the South Sydney Rabbitohs. (Badel, 2010, November 11) In mid-December 2010, the NRL refused to certify Inglis’s contract, citing third party deals in violation of the salary as the reason. (Phelps, 2010, December 19). This led Inglis to talk to Essendon and switching codes. (AAP) Based on the author’s observation, a number of people on Twitter felt that Inglis was talking to the team in order to leverage his contract situation with the NRL and Essendon was talking to Inglis to get positive media attention. If that was the case, it worked as the NRL dropped their objections and Inglis was signed to the Rabbitohs on December 24, 2010. (Mawby & AAP, 2010, December 24)

The potential code switch for Inglis had implications for two leagues, the NRL and the AFL, and three clubs, the Storm, Rabbitohs and Essendon Bombers. Everyone involved had their own agendas. Essendon and South Sydney appeared to want Inglis to bask in the player’s reflected glory. The Storm probably wanted to clear their salary cap so they can gain back their reputation was winners. The NRL appeared to want to keep one of their best players. The AFL appeared to want to have an opportunity to gain audience share by poaching one of their competition’s best players.

Based on the author’s observation, Inglis’s code change possibility was interesting enough to warrant a number of comments on Twitter. The agendas at play are worth exploring to see if they were realized: Did Essendon see an increased amount of interest in the club as a result of their discussions with Inglis? Did interest in South Sydney differ from the result of the potentially losing one of the league’s premiere players? The social media community often responds much more quickly than the offline community: It takes a real commitment to become a club member and such a decision is not likely to be made while a player’s future is up in question. Given the speed of Inglis’s Essendon exploration and termination before signing with Rabbitohs, the online analysis approach is best. This chapter will look at the that using Alexa, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia data to see how a potential player code change effects teams on both side of the decision.

Alexa

Alexa allows people to track the comparative amount of traffic to websites. It works using a toolbar that people install, which then tracks sites the people install. (alberto, 2009, July 13) Alexa is one of the few sites that provides traffic ranking for Australia. While it cannot tell people exactly how site visitors, it can give an idea of the site ranking amongst technology, public relations and social media friendly users. From December 4 to December 25, the world rank and Australian rank for the official websites of the Rabbitohs, Melbourne Storm, Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Sydney Roosters, Essendon Bombers, Geelong Cats and Collingwood Magpies were recorded. The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Sydney Roosters, Geelong Cats and Collingwood Magpies were included as controls. The AFL and NRL sites were not included as a controversy involving St. Kilda Saints players occurred during the same period. That situation involved a fair amount of criticism for the AFL’s response.

Figure 1. Alexa Australian AFL and NRL site rank from 4 Dec to 25 Dec.

News that Inglis was talking with Essendon began around December 18. The Rabbitohs saw a drop in traffic around that time, before it grew back. The day after the Rabbitohs officially signed Inglis was when they saw the most traffic during the Inglis affair. During that same period, the Melbourne Storm’s rank mostly fell, with a one-day spike the day after Inglis’s official departure. As a point of reference, the Australian rank for Sydney Roosters steadily increased and the Bulldog’s rank steadily decreased. Over in the AFL, Essendon saw a steady increase in traffic while Inglis was talking to the club. A drop in rank occurred for Essendon on the day the Rabbitoh’s announced Inglis’s official signing. During that same period, Collingwood’s traffic rank steadily declined. Geelong’s traffic stayed in the same general range, with a traffic boost on Christmas day.

World rank data, available in Appendix 10, shows the Rabbitohs rank had a greater fluctuation over that period. It went from 753,186 on December 18 to 772,298 on December 23 to 739,137 on December 25. Traffic appeared to drop off as it looked like Inglis may not sign, only to pick up again when people began speculating that Inglis’s were a feint to get the NRL to agree to the contract. From December 18 to December 25, the world rank for the Melbourne Storm, Sydney Roosters and Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs all decreased. In the AFL during that same period, Essendon saw a steady increase in their traffic rank while Geelong and Collingwood saw a steady decrease.

Australian and world rank both suggest that Essendon benefited from an increase in site visitors in response to Inglis’s talks with the clubs, while the Rabbitohs saw a decrease in traffic until it looked like Inglis was actually going to sign with the club. This suggests that Essendon’s flirting with Inglis helped create interest in the team.

Beyond traffic rank, Alexa can provide demographic data about a site’s visitors. On December 9, the information that Alexa provided about the Rabbitoh’s website was:

Rabbitohs.com.au is ranked #717,638 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. This site is in the “South Sydney Rabbitohs” category of sites. The site is relatively popular among users in the cities of Invercargill (where it is ranked #132) and Sydney (#10,897), and visitors to Rabbitohs.com.au view an average of 2.8 unique pages per day. Approximately 18% of visits to the site are referred by search engines.

Besides a little fluctuation in the numbers, the profile did not change by December 25. Essendon’s site visitors were described as follows on December 11:

There are 248,437 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Bomberland. While the site is ranked #4,157 in Australia, where roughly 84% of its visitors are located, it is also popular in Malta, where it is ranked #440. The demographics of the site’s audience do not show substantial differences from internet averages. Bomberland’s content places it in the “Essendon Bombers” category. Search engines refer approximately 6% of visits to the site.

Like the Rabbitoh’s, Essendon’s visitor profile did not change by December 25. While Essendon may have benefited traffic wise and the Rabbitohs may have been slightly punished for the potential loss of Inglis, in neither case was there enough of a difference to change Alexa’s profile of visitors to the official club sites.

Facebook

According to Alexa, Facebook is the second most popular site in Australia. (Alexa Internet, Inc., 2010, December 25). AFL clubs were quick to start using the site; clubs in the NRL were a bit slower and not all of them had official fan pages until partway through the 2010 season.

Facebook fan page membership is a good way to measure comparative interest. Membership totals were recorded for the same clubs looked at on Alexa on December 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25. This data can be found in Appendix 10. Once this was compiled, the membership difference and percentage difference was calculated for the period between December 5 and 16, December 16 and December 25, December 16 and December 22, and December 22 and December 25. This data can be found in Table 1. These time periods represent a period before the code change speculation, during the whole of the code change speculation, the period before most speculation that the talk was a ploy, and during period where most of the speculation occurred.

Table 1
Growth for official NRL and AFL fan pages

The South Sydney Rabbitohs percentage growth was similar to that of the Bulldogs and the Roosters across all periods. They were outperformed by the Melbourne Storm, who were losing Inglis. For total growth, all the NRL teams looked at outperformed the Rabbitohs. Essendon outperformed its two AFL counterparts, both in total new fans and percentage growth. These differences do not change when the slope calculation is used. This data supports the idea that Essendon benefited from its brief flirtation with Greg Inglis, whereas Inglis’s contract and potential contract did not provide the Rabbitohs with any benefit in terms of Facebook followers.

On December 23, a search was run on Facebook for unofficial fan pages about Inglis. Of the groups found, only one referenced the AFL. It can be found at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greg-Inglis-to-AFL/118712858169963 . Between December 23 and December 25, the page gained zero new followers, maintaining its fan level at 15. Based two links submitted to the page, it dates back to the earlier speculation that Inglis might have made a code switch. There were no fan pages that referenced his possible signing by the Rabbitohs and two fan pages about his abortive move to the Brisbane Broncos. One of these pages, Im going to Brisbane Broncos, LOL JK!! Im Greg Inglis, saw an increase of two members between December 24 and December 25. This increase could be interpreted as annoyance over the continued issues regarding Inglis’s perceived loyalties and willingness to keep promises to clubs/fans that he was perceived soon to be signing a contract with. Beyond that, the lack of creation of groups dedicated to Inglis and the Rabbitohs/Essendon could signal a lack of interest by Facebook fans of those clubs in having Inglis play for them.

Facebook growth indicates that Essendon benefited from the speculation that Inglis was going to switch codes and play for them. The Rabbitohs did not receive an answering bump. Fans were not motivated to join or create pages about the possibility of a code switch for Inglis. There was some benefit for Essendon, but if the latter had happened, it would have made a stronger case of Inglis being a benefit to the club.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging site, allowing users to share their thoughts in 140 characters or less to anyone who chooses to follow them. According to Alexa on December 25, 2010, it is the ninth most popular site in Australia. Like Facebook, it is popular with Australian sport clubs; every club in the AFL and NRL has an official account.

Like Facebook, one way to determine if the Rabbitohs or Essendon received any benefit from Inglis’s code changing talk is to look at the official account for the team. This data was gathered every day from December 8 to December 25, with the exception of the 22, for the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Melbourne Storm, and Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. As Sydney Roosters data was not gathered, the Newcastle Knights will be used for comparison purposes. Over that same period, data was collected for the Essendon Bombers and Collingwood Magpies. As Geelong Cats data was not, they have been replaced with the Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn Hawks. This data can be found in Appendix 10.

Once this data was collected, the difference, percent difference and slope was calculate for the period between December 11 and December 18, December 18 and December 25, December 18 and December 23, and December 23 to December 25. This data can be found in Table 2.

Table 2
Twitter Follower Statistics

Using the NRL other teams as a benchmark, the Rabbitohs did not derive a follower benefit as a result of the Inglis code change story. On the other hand, Essendon likely derived some benefit from the Inglis story as their percentage growth changed substantially from the period before the Inglis story broke, during the story, and after it was confirmed that Inglis signed with the Rabbitohs. Collingwood, Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs had much more consistent, but smaller percentage and total growth over all periods.

Another way to look at the Inglis code change flirting on Twitter involves using a tool called Twitter Venn, found at http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php . This tool allows users to input three terms. A venn diagram is then created using Twitter search to show how many times these terms were used together. This was done with the keywords Inglis, Essendon and Rabbitohs. The results are viewable in Figure 2. Another venn was created using the keywords Inglis, AFL and NRL. This venn can be found in Appendix 10.

Figure 2 . 25-Dec Twitter Venn.

The Twitter venn suggests that people were more interested in talking about the possibility of Inglis joining Essendon than they were interested in talking about Inglis’s contract with the Rabbitohs.

Both Twitter follower patterns and the Twitter venn suggest there was increased interest Essendon as a result of the possible code switch. The Rabbitohs did not benefit from increased followers, nor was there a similar level of conversation about the Rabbitohs as there was for Essendon. The code switch talks helped Essendon.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The English language version has over a million articles. According to Alexa (2010, December 25), Wikipedia is the eighth most popular site in Australia. There is an active movement by Australian Wikipedians to improve the quality of AFL and NRL related articles. Some of these articles have over 2,000 edits.

Wikipedia often acts as a major news portal when scandals hit and related articles often get a large number of page views. During the Akermanis and Monaghan controversies, there was an increase in views to the player’s pages; there was a smaller increase in article views for the clubs the athletes played for. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, where users actively discuss a topic, or chose to identify with a club by following or fanning them, viewing a Wikipedia article can be seen as a form of passive interest in that no one sees this expression of interest. Reading an article does not imply the same level of interest. Article view data is still worth examining in order to gage the level of non-fan interest around a topic, epitomized by the aforementioned Akermanis and Monaghan situations.

Article view data is available from Wikipedia article traffic statistics at http://stats.grok.se/ . The page views per article for the period between December 1 and December 24, 2010 were recorded for the following articles: Melbourne Storm, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Newcastle Knights, Sydney Roosters, Essendon Football Club, Geelong Football Club, Collingwood Football Club, and Greg Inglis. This data can be found in Appendix 10. A line graph was created using this data for the period between December 10 and December 24 and can be found in Figure 3.

Figure 3 . Wikipedia Article Views.

Just looking at the graph, neither Essendon nor the Rabbitohs saw a large traffic increase on December 22, when the Greg Inglis article saw the greatest number of views. This observation can be verified by looking at the correlation between the club article and the Greg Inglis article. In the period between December 1 and December 24, the Inglis/Essendon correlation was -0.02 and Inglis/Rabbitohs correlation was 0.03. This correlation is so small, it suggests a random pattern between the two. If the period is shortened to between December 18 and December 24, the period when speculation about a code change was at its greatest, the correlation for both strengthens a bit to 0.20 and -0.36 respectively. Still, these numbers still largely imply a random relationship. A meaningful correlation does exist between Essendon and the Rabbitohs in the period between December 18 and December 24: 0.76. This says that views for the articles both went up and down together. For the period between December 1 and December 24, the correlation was 0.45. While the Essendon/Rabbitohs correlation appears meaningful, the pattern of increasing and decreasing could relate to overall patterns increasing and decreasing interest in the AFL and NRL: There is a correlation of 0.83 between Geelong and Collingwood. Neither of these clubs was involved in any major trades or controversies during that same period.

Wikipedia correlations and the line graph suggest that neither Essendon nor South Sydney benefited with increased page views as a result of the Inglis code switch story. Put in the context of Facebook and Twitter, there was much less interest by the general public in this story. People on Wikipedia did not care much about Inglis’s possible code change.

Conclusion

In mid-December 2010, Greg Inglis talked with Essendon’s coach about the possibility of playing for the club as the NRL had refused to certify Inglis’s contract with the South Sydney Rabbitohs. This topic was talked about on Twitter, Facebook and other places on the Internet. There was speculation that this was a play for media attention by Essendon, and that Inglis was using Essendon to strengthen his position with the NRL. Whether or not this speculation was on the mark, Inglis’s actions had an impact on online actions taken by fans.

Alexa data suggests that Essendon benefited from talking with Inglis, while the Rabbitohs may have been punished with less traffic as a result of a major signing not happening. Alexa also suggests that despite traffic patterns changing, the web audience for both clubs did not change: The Rabbitohs and Essendon kept their established demographic patterns. Audience activation or deactivation was inside its own fan community pool.

Essendon also saw a bump in new fans on Facebook, where the Rabbitohs did not. Despite the increase in followers, Facebook fans did not create or join groups and fan pages to support Inglis joining their club. Essendon benefited on Facebook but not as much as they could have.

Twitter data show that Essendon again got a follower bump as a result of Inglis’s code change flirting; the Rabbitohs did not. Beyond follower count, more of the discussion on Twitter involving Inglis mentioned Essendon than the Rabbitohs.

While Essendon saw an increase in followers and traffic on the previous sites, it did not see a similar bump on Wikipedia in response to Inglis’s talks with them. Likewise, the Rabbitohs did not see an increase or decrease in article views as a result of the Inglis’s actions.

Inglis’s actions suggesting he might play for Essendon helped the club activate its fanbase, getting the team increased web traffic, more Facebook followers, more Twitter followers and generated more discussion on Twitter than Inglis and the Rabbitohs. The South Sydney Rabbitohs either were punished for Inglis’s possible defection or had no change in fan community behavior. This sort of flirting might be a good thing for clubs who desire some short term attention online.

References

• AAP. (2010, December 24). Future of Greg Inglis up in the air after talks with Essendon coach James Hird. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/future-of-greg-inglis-up-in-the-air-after-talks-with-essendon-coach-james-hird/story-e6frf9jf-1225975786549

• alberto. (2009, July 13). “How are Alexa’s traffic rankings determined?” Alexa. Retrieved June 8, 2010, from http://www.alexa.com/help/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17&sid=70b7eee4fd8d92a4f74c66e3680d1275

• Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 25). Facebook.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com

• Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 25). Twitter.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com

• Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 25). Wikipedia.org – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikipedia.org

• Badel, P. (2010, November 11). Crowe and Mundine turned GI, says Pearl. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/nrl/crowe-and-mundine-turned-gi-says-pearl/story-e6frfgbo-1225951401604

• Bradshaw, F. (2009, July 29). Bronco Karmichael Hunt to switch from NRL to AFL. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/bronco-karmichael-hunt-to-switch-from-nrl-to-afl/story-0-1225755775191

• Clark, J. (2010). Twitter Venn. Twitter Venn. Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php

• Gould, J. (2010). Tonga taunt. Rugby League Week, 10. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

• Gould, R. (2010, June 10). Greg Inglis’ path to Essendon. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/greg-inglis-path-to-essendon/story-e6frf9if-1225877655582

• Johns, A. (2010, April 26). Storm must shed star player. Herald Sun. Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/nrl/storm-must-shed-star-player/story-e6frfgh6-1225858112043

• Marshall, M. (2010, July 21). Storm star Greg Inglis set for Brisbane Broncos. The Courier-Mail. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/storm-star-greg-inglis-set-for-brisbane-broncos/story-e6freomx-1225894993769

• Mawby, N., & AAP. (2010, December 24). Greg Inglis signed to South Sydney Rabbitohs. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/nrl/greg-inglis-signed-to-south-sydney-rabbitohs/story-e6frfgeo-1225975989228

• O’Neill, J. (2007). It’s only a game, a life in sport. North Sydney: Random House Australia.

• Pearce, N. (2009, July 30). Karmichael Hunt stuns Australia by making historic code switch to Aussie Rules. The Telegraph. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyleague/5939159/Karmichael-Hunt-stuns-Australia-by-making-historic-code-switch-to-Aussie-Rules.html

• Phelps, J. (2010, December 19). South Sydney Rabbitohs offload Beau Champion, Ben Lowe and Michael Crocker after Greg Inglis deal blocked. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/south-sydney-rabbitohs-offload-beau-champion-ben-lowe-and-michael-crocker-after-greg-inglis-deal-blocked/story-e6frf9if-1225973353047

• Sky Sports. (2009, October 20). Hunt heading to Biarritz. Sky Sports. Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,16616_5639530,00.html

Appendix 10

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I wasn’t intending to run this again until tomorrow.  Things came up.  I’m going away for the weekend and I want to get everyone’s follower information to see if I can’t begin to map that again.  Also, it’s been a month since I last that information.  (It took about five days.  That was back when Shane Warne had only 198,000 followers.)  I like benchmarking that data to see if there are geographic shifts in where people follow are from.  (Has the location of where Team GWS followers come from?)  So yeah, I figured I would run the script this morning instead of a week from now.

This particular list only includes AFL related accounts. (And everyone on it appears on the list of most popular for all of Australia.)   I’m hoping all the labels are right.  If anything is incorrect, players switched team, I’m missing people… let me know and I’ll fix it.  And yeah, I’ve ranked this one so you can more easily see who is popular and who is not.

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This post is another data dump. There are some numbers that changed here. (For interests where there were zero people and zero communities interested in it, I left it off this list. This was to make the list shorter than 500.) The Adelaide Crows lost both people and communities listing them as an interest. The Brisbane Broncos also lost a person. My guess is that these losses were less a result of loss of interest in a team than account deletions because of LiveJournal policy changes. If/When they shifted to say Dreamwidth, they may not have listed the same interests or reccreated all the communities that they had belonged to. On the other hand, this could be a bit moot as the Melbourne Victory and North Melbourne Kangaroos both gained one person listing them as an interest…

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A friend is building me a Twitter tool that will allow me to get the location information for people who follow certain accounts. It hasn’t had all the bugs worked out of it. At the moment, it only captures the 100 most recent followers’s location information. That said, this could still be interesting so I got the follower location data for five Essendon related Twitter accounts: Essendon_FC, essendonfc, JasonJohnson14, jobewatson, SteveAlessio. Bear in mind, this is the 100 most recent followers only… but it gives an idea as to where the fanbase is for the team and how players and former players differ from the club and a Bombers fansite. (I’ll eventually get around to getting more teams and all the followers and do a better post then.)

Table below. This is based on capture data from 7am Canberra time on August 24, 2010.

I’ve been occassionally collecting tweets related to the AFL from Searchtastic. I’ve blogged about that in earlier posts. If I decide to compare apples to oranges, recent tweet follower locations to tweet references by tweeter location, there are some noticable geographic differences in where people are tweeting about the team from compared to where they follow from. (This isn’t a fair comparison for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, neither represents a particularly complete data set. 2% of total followers versus unknown amount of tweets is hardly representative. I’m making it anyway, mostly to amuse myself and so I can potentially follow up later.) There are different patterns.  There are more international based tweets than international recent followers…

What would be interesting is to see if this hold up if the tweet total went up and the follower locations represented the whole population…   I just don’t know how many tweets would need to be included to even begin to provide an accurate picture.  (I’ve started logging a few #hashtags on http://twapperkeeper.com/ and hopefully I can get more Tweets archived and get some one to do a script call for me to pull in the location information of the user.)

This data isn’t really complete and I really dislike text based content analysis but the patterns seem pretty clear at the moment that the people tweeting and following the team are what is probably the ideal market for Essendon in that they can more easily monetize those fans by selling them merchandise in Australia, getting them to attend games or having them watch games on television. The raw data (only Bombers related from a larger Australian sport Excel related file) used in this post is available at Essendon.xls.

Related Posts:

• Most popular AFL teams across social media sites (February 14, 2011)
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 1)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)

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:

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:

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:

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.

Related Posts:

• Most popular AFL teams across social media sites (February 14, 2011)
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 1)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)

While on vacation, a friend of mine recommended I read Want to be Retweeted? Add Hashtags to Your Tweets! The article is rather interesting and looks at the #hashtags that led to the most ReTweets.

I have a collection of AFL related tweets that I update semi-regularly. More often than not, I use these for geographic related analysis. My AFL tweet collection has a series of issues though that make me hesitant to always draw definitive conclusions from it. These issues include:

• Incomplete tweet set for keywords: I only get what is available from Searchtastic.
• Incomplete tweet set based on keyword limitations: Even supposing I could get all the tweets related to a keyword, I can’t find every reference to the AFL as there are too many possible words that could reference the AFL and its clubs.
• Incomplete tweet set because of time: Some keywords were searched for earlier and some later. Not all keywords were looked at over the same period.
• Irrelevant tweets: Keywords like #gosaints may refer to the St. Kilda Saints or the New Orleans Saints. AFL may refer to the AFL-CIO, a union in the United States. Unless every tweet is examined, irrelevant tweets will remain in the data set.

These are major obstacles to doing any sort of content analysis for Twitter when specific subgroups are looked at. Many of these issues are ones that other researchers are likely to have too: You can’t get the complete data set, will include garbage data and may not be entirely timely.

That said, despite these limitations, I still wanted to know what are the most popular #hashtags for AFL related tweets and what type of hashtags are likely to be ReTweeted.

To get my dataset of Tweets, first I went to Searchtastic, ran a series of searches over the course of 6 weeks, and exported those results to Excel. I noted the keyword I searched for and the team that keyword is related to. The keyword searches that were run on Searchtastic during this period included: #afl, #aflbluestigers, #aflcatslions, #afldemonsswans, #afldogscats, #afldogsfreo, #afldogspower, #afleaglesblues, #aflfooty, #aflhawksdemons, #aflkangasbombers, #aflkangasfreo, #AFLPAQUIZ, #aflpiestigers, #aflpowercrows, #aflpowereagles, #aflsaintshawks, #aflswanshawks , #brisbanelions, #dreamteam, #footy, #fremantle, #freo, #freo AFL, #goblues, #gobombers, #Gocats, #gocrows, #gopies, #gosaints, #goswans, #NMFC, #northmelbourne, #sackermanis, #supercoach, #sydneyswans, #teamgws, #thekennel, #wafl, #westcoast afl, ackermanis sacked, ACT4GWS, Adelaide Crows, Adelaide_FC, afl Bombers, AFL GWS, AFL Magpies, afl pies, AFL Tony Lockett, Aker Bulldogs, Akermanis, akermanis dogs, akermanis gillard, Australian rules, blues afl, Brad Johnson, Brad Johnson AFL, Brady Rawlings, brisbane afl, Brisbane Lions, Brownlow Medal, Cameron Mooney cats, Carlton Blues, Chris Judd Carlton, Collingwood, collingwood AFL, Collingwood Magpies, crows afl, Damien Hardwick, DemonsHQ, Dockers AFL, eagles afl, eagles perth, Eric Mackenzie , Essendon afl, Essendon Bombers, etihad kilda, folau afl, folau israel, Fremantle Dockers, fremantle ruckman, GCFC, geelong cats, Gold Coast Suns, harry_o, Hawthorn Hawks, HawthornFC, Jason Akermanis, Jeff Kennett, Judd Blues, kilda, kilda AFL, kilda riewoldt, lions afl, Mark Harvey, mcg kilda, Melbourne Demons, milburn cats, Nathan van Berlo Crows, North Melbourne Kangaroos, PAFC, Peter Szental, Port Adelaide Power, portadelaidefc, Richmond Football, Richmond Tigers, Rodney Eade dogs, roos afl, sackermanis, spoon eagles, spoon lions, spoon tigers, spoon wce, swans afl, swans footy, swans ruckman, Sydney Swans, tigers afl, Travis Johnstone, Trent Cotchin, WCE AFL, West Coast Eagles, and Western Bulldogs. These keywords represent all teams and often include multiple keywords for them.

The next step was to remove all duplicate tweets. As some tweets contain multiple keywords and some searches were run more than once over that 6-week time period, that possibility existed. To do this, three columns were copy and pasted to a new worksheet: Username, Tweet and In Reply To. On Excel, I did this using Filter -> Advanced Filter -> Unique records only. This process took the total tweets from 8,523 to 5,427.

The third step was to identify all the hash tags used in this data set. To do this, I copy and pasted all the tweets to Notepad. I ran a find and replace for [space]# and replaced with [tab]#. I copy and pasted these back, removed all cells that did not start with a #. After this was done, the data set was copy and pasted back to Notepad. Another find and replace was done, this time, [space] was replaced with [tab]. This was pasted back to excel and all cells that did not start with # were deleted. The completed list was 2,833 total hashtags used. Of these, 556 were unique. The following table counts their total usage:

The next step was to count the total @ replies and hashtag uses. To do this, all the unique tweets were copied to a new worksheet. A filter was created to list all tweets that did not include an @ sign. These tweets were deleted. This brought the total tweets from 5,427 to 1,844. The next step was to create a filter to show all tweets that did not include a #. These tweets were then deleted. This brought the total Tweets down to 832. The next step was to look remove tweets that did not contain “RT @”, “RT:@”, “retweeting @”, “retweet @”, “via @”, “thx @”, “HT @”, or “r @”. This leaves 458 tweets that are retweets that contain hash tags.

The same process was conducted to count the hash tags that was used for all hash tags and RT @. The following list was created of people who were the most ReTweeted (or mentioned in the ReTweeted tweet) where the tweets contained #hashtags and the #hashtag totals for ReTweets. These were then totaled and counted, resulting in the following table: