Archive for category Twitter

Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 29 July, 2010

I haven’t done an update in a month or so… but this is my list of Australian clubs, leagues and athletes on Twitter.  It is sorted by followers.  The list is rather comprehensive but not all comprehensive.  A few accounts have been deleted since the last time I did this.  Those accounts aren’t noted this time around. And unlike the last time around, I haven’t htmled the Twitter accounts.  If you see any people or clubs or fansites that I’m missing, let me know in the comments.

League Team Account Date collected Following Followers Lists
First class cricket New South Wales Blues PH408 (player) 29-Jul-10 0 12,146 407
Super 14 Natal Sharks JohnSmit123 (player) 29-Jul-10 21 11,368 414
AFL AFL AFL (official) 29-Jul-10 269 11,326 388
Super 14 Pretoria Bulls (Northern Bulls) VictorMatfield (player) 29-Jul-10 36 10,651 414
Rugby World Cup South Africa Lions LionsRugbyTeam 29-Jul-10 10,529 9,738 291
NRL Wests Tigers LoteTuqiri (player) 29-Jul-10 70 9,307 449
Rugby World Cup All Blacks nzru 29-Jul-10 88 8,795 432
NRL NRL NRL 29-Jul-10 29 6,816 216
NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons RealBigDell (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 113 6,641 215
AFL Collingwood Magpies Collingwood_FC 29-Jul-10 5,516 6,205 207
AFL Essendon Bombers Essendon_FC 29-Jul-10 5,677 5,791 196
AFL Adelaide Crows Adelaide_FC 29-Jul-10 5,642 5,656 199
AFL Melbourne Demons jimstynes (player) 29-Jul-10 13 5,508 142
Super 14 Queensland Reds QuadeCooper (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 50 5,439 215
AFL Collingwood Magpies harry_o (player) 29-Jul-10 498 5,329 201
AFL Essendon Bombers JobeWatson (player) 29-Jul-10 5 4,937 156
AFL Sydney Swans sydneyswans (official) 29-Jul-10 2,461 4,848 195
Super 14 Canterbury Crusaders mornesteyn (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 2 4,566 213
Super 14 Wellington Hurricanes NeemiaTialata (Neemia Tialata) 29-Jul-10 1,283 4,541 283
Swimming Australia Stephanie Rice ItsStephRice (athlete) 29-Jul-10 93 4,418 225
NRL Gold Coast Titans mat_rogers6 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 132 4,285 224
AFL Essendon Bombers AngusMonfries (player) 29-Jul-10 16 4,264 157
World Cup Socceroos socceroos (official) 29-Jul-10 756 4,043 181
AFL Hawthorn Hawks lehmo23 (player) 29-Jul-10 521 4,010 154
Super 14 Wellington Hurricanes Hurricanesrugby 29-Jul-10 3,320 3,825 159
AFL St. Kilda Saints stkildafc (official) 29-Jul-10 3,885 3,816 157
AFL Carlton Blues Carlton_FC (official) 29-Jul-10 2,979 3,659 169
AFL Geelong Cats Geelong_FC (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 1,992 3,119 126
Rugby World Cup Wallabies QantasWallabies 29-Jul-10 383 3,076 172
First class cricket New South Wales Blues NBRACKEN142 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 85 2,828 152
Super 14 Wellington Hurricanes Powza13 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 390 2,690 173
AFL Hawthorn Hawks HawthornFC (official) 29-Jul-10 8 2,597 139
AFL Richmond Tigers Richmond_FC 29-Jul-10 148 2,525 122
AFL Melbourne Demons nathan2jones (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 253 2,490 106
NRL Gold Coast Titans GCTitans 29-Jul-10 12 2,447 109
AFL Collingwood Magpies mickmalthouse (Mick Malthouse) 29-Jul-10 11 2,297 66
AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos northkangaroos (official) 29-Jul-10 69 2,241 125
A-League Melbourne Victory gomvfc 29-Jul-10 1,429 2,211 144
AFL Brisbane Lions BrendanFevola05 (player) 29-Jul-10 27 2,189 72
NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) nzwarriors (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 372 2,182 77
AFL Melbourne Demons DemonsHQ (official) 29-Jul-10 311 1,896 114
World Cup Socceroos socceroos_news (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 1,723 1,858 80
Super 14 Cape Town Stormers (Western Stormers) THESTORMERS 29-Jul-10 213 1,828 76
AFL Melbourne Demons CamSchwab (ceo) 29-Jul-10 288 1,810 81
AFL Port Adelaide Power PAFC (official) 29-Jul-10 31 1,804 123
NRL Wests Tigers Wests_Tigers (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 827 1,787 74
AFL West Coast Eagles WCEofficial 29-Jul-10 4 1,775 113
Super 14 Durban Sharks (Coastal Sharks)(Natal Sharks) sharksrugby 29-Jul-10 36 1,766 86
AFL Collingwood Magpies DT_13 (Dale Thomas) 29-Jul-10 6 1,751 44
NRL North Queensland Cowboys northqldcowboys 29-Jul-10 37 1,649 77
Tennis Australia Tennis Australia TennisAustralia (official) 29-Jul-10 63 1,638 165
NBL Melbourne Tigers Follow24Hodge (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 27 1,638 93
NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs SSFCRABBITOHS 29-Jul-10 789 1,610 89
AFL Fremantle Dockers Fremantle_FC (official) 29-Jul-10 147 1,578 104
NRL Melbourne Storm MelbStormRLC (official) 29-Jul-10 1,184 1,473 87
AFL Gold Coast Football Club GoldCoastFC (official) 29-Jul-10 571 1,458 110
AFL Hawthorn Hawks Hawks_AFL (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 1,979 1,446 29
ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens MelbourneVixens 29-Jul-10 706 1,405 56
NRL Manly Sea Eagles manlyseaeagles 29-Jul-10 111 1,338 72
First class cricket Victorian Bushrangers Bushrangers 29-Jul-10 1,389 1,336 89
First class cricket New South Wales Blues ClarkeVC (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 34 1,264 41
AFL Melbourne Demons Rickypetterd15 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 66 1,260 57
NBL Adelaide 36ers Adelaide36ers 29-Jul-10 834 1,132 66
AFL Melbourne Demons howcroft 29-Jul-10 68 1,127 38
AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos andrewswallow (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 13 1,096 67
NRL NRL NRLNEWS (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 182 1,068 27
NRL Penrith Panthers penrithpanthers (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 83 1,067 70
Super 14 Canterbury Crusaders crusadersrugby 29-Jul-10 2 1,065 75
AFL Western Bulldogs westernbulldogs (official) 29-Jul-10 9 1,053 68
AFL Brisbane Lions ALFbrisbane (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 3 1,053 45
A-League Melbourne Victory mitchlangerak (player) 29-Jul-10 13 1,010 58
NRL Parramatta Eels parramatta_eels 29-Jul-10 1,090 993 27
AFL Collingwood Magpies PeterDaicos (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 684 964 60
ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens SharelleVixens 29-Jul-10 35 961 37
A-League Sydney FC SydneyFC1011 29-Jul-10 786 955 78
AFL AFL SENfooty 29-Jul-10 59 946 48
A-League Central Coast Mariners Football Club LawrieMcKinna (coach) 29-Jul-10 1 922 68
A-League Melbourne Victory adrianleijer (player, Adrian Leijer) 29-Jul-10 48 906 65
NBL Wollongong Hawks wollongonghawks 29-Jul-10 1,568 881 63
AFL Melbourne Demons MCC_Members 29-Jul-10 558 857 27
NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs benross23 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 48 854 42
Super 14 ACT Brumbies BrumbiesRugby 29-Jul-10 135 848 65
NBL South Dragons Joeingles7 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 43 830 50
NRL Melbourne Storm MelbourneStorm_ (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 13 827 28
Super 14 Queensland Reds RedsRugby (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 166 824 44
Super 14 Queensland Reds Reds_Rugby 29-Jul-10 26 817 58
AFL Collingwood Magpies bigdyman (player) 29-Jul-10 19 810 54
AFL AFL AFLphotos (official) 29-Jul-10 75 798 46
NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs therabbitohs (official) 29-Jul-10 10 790 61
NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs therabbitohs (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 10 790 61
NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs rabbitohs (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 665 788 36
A-League North Queensland Fury FC nqfuryfc 29-Jul-10 1,808 786 52
Super 14 Natal Sharks KeeganDaniel (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 5 761 42
NRL Parramatta Eels PirtekParraEels (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 7 759 46
NRL NRL NRLTweet (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 161 731 43
AFL Collingwood Magpies collingwoodnews (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 1 729 31
First class cricket Queensland Bulls andrew_symonds (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 5 716 28
NBL Perth Wildcats perthwildcats 29-Jul-10 74 704 54
Super 14 Melbourne Rebels melbournerebels 29-Jul-10 738 695 38
AIS University of Canberra National Institute of Sport Studies unicanberra 29-Jul-10 118 688 36
NSW Premier League Sydney Olympic MarkBosnich (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 16 676 44
Basketball Australia Australian Boomers aussieboomers 29-Jul-10 0 656 53
NBL NBL NBLhoops 29-Jul-10 47 651 52
NRL Gold Coast Titans AshHarrison1 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 25 618 40
A-League Melbourne Victory victoryinmelb 29-Jul-10 80 616 47
NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) thenzwarriors 29-Jul-10 72 614 49
A-League Wellington Phoenix wgtnphoenixfc 29-Jul-10 57 612 41
NRL Canberra Raiders RaidersCanberra 29-Jul-10 5 608 58
A-League A-League thefootballsack (fansite) 29-Jul-10 1,920 594 39
NBL New Zealand Breakers johnrillie (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 347 592 48
AFL Fremantle Dockers Freo_Dockers (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 319 581 44
NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks SharksOnline (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 846 569 11
NRL Gold Coast Titans lukeodwyer (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 49 561 42
Netball Australia Netball Australia NetballAust 29-Jul-10 121 559 53
AFL West Coast Eagles wingsofperth (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 5 555 11
A-League Brisbane Roar BNERoar (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 186 539 42
AFL Greater Western Sydney team_gws (official) 29-Jul-10 102 538 50
A-League Perth Glory PerthGlory_FC 29-Jul-10 13 526 56
AFL St. Kilda Saints njbrown17 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 19 506 34
NRL Manly Sea Eagles gorgeousgrose (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 28 503 27
AFL Brisbane Lions AFLBrisbaneFC 29-Jul-10 25 484 21
NRL NRL TWiLeague (show) 29-Jul-10 1,262 480 29
A-League Adelaide United adelaideunited 29-Jul-10 134 480 46
A-League Newcastle Jets newcastle_jets 29-Jul-10 15 480 30
Super 14 Queensland Reds L_Weeks (player) 29-Jul-10 77 475 34
World Cup Socceroos GGArmy (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 576 471 28
AFL Fremantle Dockers FremantleFC (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 0 461 12
AFL Essendon Bombers JasonJohnson14 (former player) 29-Jul-10 17 460 18
NRL Parramatta Eels PlanetEels (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 551 456 26
A-League Sydney FC SFCNews (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 135 455 51
ANZ Championship Queensland Firebirds laurafirebirds (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 11 451 21
NBL Perth Wildcats CatsGM 29-Jul-10 53 424 53
NBL Wollongong Hawks milisimic (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 736 422 30
A-League Adelaide United adelaidereds 29-Jul-10 280 409 52
A-League Brisbane Roar brisbaneroar 29-Jul-10 4 404 47
Super 14 ACT Brumbies snorkymortlock (player) 29-Jul-10 9 403 23
NRL Brisbane Broncos broncosbigfan (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 398 389 20
ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds NatTbirds 29-Jul-10 0 389 20
AFL AFL AFL_Shifter (talent scout, Kevin Sheehan) 29-Jul-10 9 386 16
NRL NRL NRLlivebetting (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 17 379 2
NBL Townsville Crocodiles TsvCrocs 29-Jul-10 343 377 34
Netball Australia Australian Diamonds (national team) AussieDiamonds 29-Jul-10 40 371 21
ANZ Championship New South Wales Swifts SusanSwifts 29-Jul-10 23 360 22
AFL Sydney Swans JaredCrouch (former player) 29-Jul-10 72 356 22
Netball Victoria Netball Victoria netballvic 29-Jul-10 633 355 21
AFL AFL AFLInsider (official) 29-Jul-10 85 354 26
NBL Melbourne Tigers Wortho33 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 81 352 30
NBL Sydney Kings thesydneykings (official) 29-Jul-10 5 352 31
First class cricket Tassie Tigers crickettas 29-Jul-10 1 352 18
Rugby League/State of Origin New South Wales Blues NSWRL 29-Jul-10 58 345 23
NRL Wests Tigers fakebrycegibbs (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 369 344 19
NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons mighty_dragons (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 7 330 17
ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens Renaehallinan (player) 29-Jul-10 35 328 14
NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks Fergo1990 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 16 327 21
NBL Townsville Crocodiles chomicide (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 201 323 26
AFL AFL AFL_JenWitham 29-Jul-10 140 322 34
NRL Parramatta Eels blueandgoldarmy (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 61 320 12
NBL Cairns Taipans Dusty_Rychart (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 45 317 22
Australian Cycling Federation rachel neylan rachneylan (athlete) 29-Jul-10 225 306 29
World Cup Socceroos HalfTimeHeroes (soccer fansite) 29-Jul-10 790 302 18
AFL West Coast Eagles WestCoastEagles (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 0 299 5
A-League A-League ultimatealeague (fansite) 29-Jul-10 44 287 29
AFL Melbourne Demons MelbourneFC (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 0 281 11
NRL Brisbane Broncos BrisbaneBronco (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 86 277 10
AFL Essendon Bombers essendonfc (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 0 266 9
AIS University of Canberra National Institute of Sport Studies 520507 (Keith Lyons) 29-Jul-10 336 265 12
AFL West Coast Eagles MitchJbrown17 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 7 263 30
NRL Newcastle Knights Corypato (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 25 261 16
First class cricket Victorian Bushrangers MatthewWade13 (player) 29-Jul-10 62 260 18
A-League Gold Coast United GCUSC (unofficial supporter club) 29-Jul-10 242 259 20
First class cricket New South Wales Blues eddiecowan (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 134 258 27
First class cricket Victorian Bushrangers AaronFinch5 (player) 29-Jul-10 78 256 17
NBL New Zealand Breakers NZBreakers 29-Jul-10 12 254 28
UCI Continental Team (Oceania Region) Team Jayco Skins / Cycling Australia teamjaycoskins (official) 29-Jul-10 19 249 19
AFL Melbourne Demons demonland (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 176 247 9
AFL Western Bulldogs _the_kennel_ 29-Jul-10 28 245 15
Hockey Australia Hockeyroos katehollywood10 29-Jul-10 66 242 13
AIHL Sydney Bears sydneybears 29-Jul-10 568 240 4
Tennis Australia Sam Stosur samstosurnews (official) 29-Jul-10 54 235 19
NBL New Zealand Breakers oscarforman (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 38 232 22
Handball Australia Canberra Handball Club sashpet (player) 29-Jul-10 897 222 6
NRL Brisbane Broncos broncobasher (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 243 219 5
ANZ Championship New South Wales Swifts nswswifts 29-Jul-10 8 216 16
A-League Central Coast Mariners Football Club CCMarinersFC (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 117 215 27
VFL Casey Scorpions CaseyScorpions 29-Jul-10 5 211 8
Volleyball Australia Volleyball Australia ausvolley 29-Jul-10 10 207 12
First class cricket South Australian Redbacks (Southern Redbacks) RedbacksT20 29-Jul-10 7 206 23
NBL Perth Wildcats TheRealSchensh (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 17 202 21
NBL Townsville Crocodiles rustyhinder (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 100 200 26
First class cricket Victorian Bushrangers petersiddle (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 1 193 18
AIHL Melbourne Ice TheMelbourneIce 29-Jul-10 1 193 9
NRL Parramatta Eels 1eyedeel (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 646 188 11
VFL Williamstown Football Club WilliamstownFC 29-Jul-10 175 188 7
ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds AdelaideTBirds 29-Jul-10 0 188 14
ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens JulieCorletto (Julie Corletto) 29-Jul-10 27 187 6
Super 14 Western Australia Force (Western Force) s14_force 29-Jul-10 2 183 13
AFL Fremantle Dockers ryanmcrowley (player) 29-Jul-10 17 179 15
WNBL WNBL WNBL 29-Jul-10 38 178 22
Super 14 Central Cheetahs (Vodacom Cheetahs) VodacomCheetahs 29-Jul-10 44 177 13
AFL Sydney Swans BionicSwan (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 20 177 26
Super 14 Queensland Reds s14_queensland (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 2 169 10
VFL North Ballarat Roosters NB_Roosters 29-Jul-10 26 167 10
Rugby League/State of Origin Queensland Maroons QLD_Maroons 29-Jul-10 1 167 4
NBL Adelaide 36ers DarrenNg8 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 59 163 14
NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons jsaffy (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 11 159 13
NRL Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs bulldogsnews (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 105 145 6
A-League Melbourne Victory victorytwit (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 49 143 11
A-League Melbourne Victory mvfcfanzone 29-Jul-10 115 142 20
ANZ Championship West Coast Fever SusanWCFever 29-Jul-10 23 142 13
AFL Melbourne Demons matesOmelbourne (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 1 141 11
NRL Balmain Tigers tigers1908 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 7 137 11
AFL Western Bulldogs ccaallward (player) 29-Jul-10 0 136 24
AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos Marcus__White (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 27 135 16
AFL Hawthorn Hawks bmsew (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 22 132 21
NBL Perth Wildcats catslisch 29-Jul-10 10 132 8
First class cricket Queensland Bulls qldcricket 29-Jul-10 13 130 6
AFL AFL AFL_Aus (fansite) 29-Jul-10 0 126 7
NBL Adelaide 36ers jgovereasy (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 35 122 11
W-League W-League AusWomensGame (fansite) 29-Jul-10 43 112 11
AFL St. Kilda Saints RWBFooty (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 70 111 9
SFL Caulfield Bears CaulfieldBears 29-Jul-10 195 107 1
Gridiron Australia Nationals Perth Blitz fatloaf (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 170 100 4
Gridiron Australia Nationals WA Raiders fatloaf (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 170 100 4
AIHL AIHL AIHL 29-Jul-10 31 99 2
AIHL Gold Coast Bluetongues gcbluetongues 29-Jul-10 47 97 2
AFL Geelong Cats thecattery (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 16 97 5
NBL Sydney Kings sydneykings 29-Jul-10 61 94 12
Netball New South Wales Sydney_Netball 29-Jul-10 64 90 5
AFL Fremantle Dockers briansham (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 12 87 12
NBL Wollongong Hawks danjackson9 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 60 84 8
NBL Perth Wildcats CatsTM 29-Jul-10 26 84 8
NRL Gold Coast Titans Aaron_Cannings (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 3 81 11
AIS New South Wales Institute of Sport theNSWIS (official) 29-Jul-10 259 80 0
NBL Townsville Crocodiles JoshJenkins24 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 59 75 8
Volleyball Australia Volleyball SA mmurpha (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 113 74 2
AFL Richmond Tigers yellow_n_black (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 4 74 8
A-League Sydney FC SydneyFC 29-Jul-10 0 73 4
Semi Professional Basketball League Semi Professional Basketball League SEABL 29-Jul-10 12 70 8
AFL Melbourne Demons demonwiki (fansite) 29-Jul-10 70 69 1
AFL Canberra Sydney Swans Reserves swansreserves 29-Jul-10 24 67 4
NBL Perth Wildcats Cats_Coach 29-Jul-10 11 67 4
U18 National Championships Western Australia U18s team WA_U18s 29-Jul-10 9 67 1
NBL Adelaide 36ers BenFitz (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 54 66 7
U18 National Championships Victoria U18s team VicMetroU18s 29-Jul-10 4 66 2
NBL Perth Wildcats CatsWagstaff 29-Jul-10 10 65 5
U18 National Championships Tasmania U18s team TasU18s 29-Jul-10 7 64 1
NBL Adelaide 36ers 36ers (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 16 60 11
U18 National Championships South Australia U18s team SA_U18s 29-Jul-10 8 60 2
NRL NRL womeninleague 29-Jul-10 15 59 6
Australian Baseball League Australian Baseball League ABLeague 29-Jul-10 5 58 3
NBL Perth Wildcats CatsGear 29-Jul-10 35 57 2
U18 National Championships Victoria U18s team VicCountryU18s 29-Jul-10 5 57 2
Claxton Shield Barbagallo Perth Heat PerthHeat 29-Jul-10 23 56 4
U18 National Championships Northern Territory U18s team NT_U18s 29-Jul-10 16 55 1
U18 National Championships Queensland U18s team QldU18s 29-Jul-10 5 54 1
NBL Perth Wildcats CatsTickets 29-Jul-10 7 53 5
NBL South (Melbourne) Dragons SAVEOURDRAGONS (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 54 51 3
UCI Continental Team (Oceania Region) Team Jayco Skins / Cycling Australia AlexCarver91 (athlete) 29-Jul-10 71 50 3
AFL Collingwood Magpies VictoriaParkHC (grounds) 29-Jul-10 21 50 2
AFL Sydney Swans RTTF_AU (fansite) 29-Jul-10 99 47 5
NSW Premier League Manly United ManlyUnited 29-Jul-10 26 46 5
NBL Townsville Crocodiles willo43 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 24 46 6
U18 National Championships New South Wales U18s team NSWACT_Rams 29-Jul-10 7 46 1
AFL Greater Western Sydney ACT4GWS 29-Jul-10 40 44 1
WNBL Bendio Spirit bendigospirit 29-Jul-10 31 43 4
NRL Parramatta Eels parraeels (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 0 42 4
NBL Perth Wildcats CatsCommunity 29-Jul-10 79 41 3
NBL Townsville Crocodiles Kegs42 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 43 40 7
AIHL AIHL hnim (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 2 40 4
AFL Essendon Bombers bomberblitz (player) 29-Jul-10 19 38 1
AIHL AIHL hockeypulse (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 20 36 2
Australian Cross Country Ski Team Australian Cross Country Ski Team AUS_XC (official) 29-Jul-10 6 35 4
Netball New South Wales Petersham RUFC Netball Club PetershamNetbal 29-Jul-10 13 34 5
Brisbane Netball Association ACE Netball Club ACENetball 29-Jul-10 3 33 5
WNBL Dandenong Jayco Rangers JaycoRangers 29-Jul-10 1 32 7
Plenty Valley Netball Association Orcas Netball Orcas_Netball 29-Jul-10 2 31 8
NBL Gold Coast Blaze Vandy21 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 8 30 9
AFL Fremantle Dockers bc8977 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 10 22 7
Cycling Australia Velo Canberra velocanberra 29-Jul-10 24 20 0
NBL Perth Wildcats Cats_Media 29-Jul-10 11 20 2
VFL Port Melbourne Borough BoroughBoy (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 2 20 12
W-League W-League abcwleague (media outlet) 29-Jul-10 15 19 4
AFL Essendon Bombers jreynojreyno (player) 29-Jul-10 16 18 1
NBL Perth Wildcats nickmarvin (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 5 16 2
NBL Townsville Crocodiles ToffCedar (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 39 15 5
AIS University of Canberra National Institute of Sport Studies ucniss (official) 29-Jul-10 20 14 1
NBL Townsville Crocodiles cameronwhiting (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 11 13 6
WNBL Logan Thunder loganthunder 29-Jul-10 2 11 6
Triathlon TriathlonTSO TriathlonTSO 29-Jul-10 35 9 0
Tennis Australia Tennis Canberra tenniscanberra (official) 29-Jul-10 9 8 0
NBL Adelaide 36ers brad_393 (unofficial) 29-Jul-10 10 7 3
AFLNT AFLNT Chippa39 (official) 29-Jul-10 15 4 0
Gridiron Australia Nationals Perth Blitz perthblitz 29-Jul-10 0 1 2

Related Posts:

AFL fan community sentiment: Are fans happy or sad?

Posted by Laura on Sunday, 25 July, 2010

I generally don’t believe in sentiment analysis.  I tend to think it is junk because so much of automated sentiment analysis misses contextual clues, relying too heavily on keywords.  Sentiment analysis also tends to give sentiment to bot generated posts and to posts that are neutral.  Despite this, I thought it might be a bit interesting to try to do a sentiment analysis of the AFL fan community on Twitter.  Are they happy or are they sad?  And later, where are the happy fans and where are the sad fans?

The first step in doing that was to collect a whole bunch of AFL related tweets using searchtastic.  I’m currently up around 3,400 tweets. (When/If I do the geolocation version, I’ll provide the raw data set.)  The second step was to develop a list of AFL specific sentiment related words.  In my case, I’m just going with the characteristic of happy and sad to make this easier.  My sentiment keyword list is as follows:

Happy Sad
Best Worst
Win Spoon
happy lose
excited sucks
smile awful
star sackermanis
brownlo fired
medal suspended
victory fouled
club song sad
pride upset
won fail
congrats heartbreak
Purchased lost
lucky Sold
success Desperate
champions blow it
Fit blew it
Riewolt damn
glad avoid
legend unlucky
star failed
brilliant Akermanis
cruised slammed
hope injured
strained
medical
ugly
suspension
crisis
stumble
tribunal
poor
loss
wounded

The next step was to give a happy or sad label for tweets that included these terms. The last step was to count up how many Tweets were labeled Happy, Happy / Sad, Sad, No Sentiment.  I generated the following table:

Tweets % % – None
Happy 704 21% 55%
Happy / Sad 147 4% 11%
Sad 436 13% 34%
No Sentiment 2128 62%
Total 3415
Total 1287

Later, I’m hoping to match this sentiment with the geographic location of the tweets to find out where the pockets of AFL happiness are versus the pockets of AFL sadness are.

Related Posts:

Australian elections: The geography of Twitter

Posted by Laura on Monday, 19 July, 2010

I wanted to create a map of where people who were following Australian political candidates and/or tweeting about the Australian elections were living. I’ve been getting similar data for Australian sport teams and this feels like a natural extension. I’m not doing an analysis of this data and these maps because while I feel I know enough about Australian sport to draw conclusions, I don’t feel comfortable with Australian politics. If some one else wants to do that or use my raw data, please feel free.

Just as a caveat, this is a limited data set that was collected on the morning of July 19, 2010. I used a tool to mine this and the amount of data included was based on what that tool gave me.

Data Collection Methodology

  1. Identify the major candidates in the Australian elections on Twitter (Tony Abbot, Bob Brown, Julia Gillard) and some of the more popular search phrases and hash tags used by Twitter users (#alp vote, #aus2010, #ausvotes, #laborfail, #myliberal, #nocleanfeed , #qanda, Abbott-Gillard, asylum boat, Gillard, Greens Canberra, Krudd Labor, Labor Liberals, Rudd Liberals, Tony Abbott, Truss LNP, Warren Truss, WorkChoices)
  2. Go to http://www.searchtastic.com/ , run a search for those phrases and accounts. Export results to an Excel spread sheet. (Total tweets picked up: 27,506)
  3. Create a new sheet. Copy and paste only those Tweets by people that list a location. (Total tweets included: 26,198)
  4. Using location information from profiles, try to determine the city, state, country that the person lives in. Example: Melbourne = Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ChiTown = Chicago, Illinois, United States. Brizzy = Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. 32.38504,-83.647406 = Perry, Georgia, United States. Oz = Australia.



View full map

Methodology: Gillard, Abbot, Brown, Truss

  1. On Excel, turn AutoFilter on.
  2. Filter the Tweet column to contain one of the following terms: Gillard, Abbot, Brown, Truss
  3. Copy and paste the City, State, Country columns to a new worksheet. Select those columns on the new worksheet.
  4. Sort data by city. Remove all locations that do not include City information.
  5. Go to Advance Filter. Copy the Unique Records to Another Location.
  6. Using a COUNTIF formula, count the number of tweets that mentioned the term by city.
  7. Go to http://www.batchgeo.com/ and copy paste the city, state, column, count in the box for step 1. Click on the Map Now button.
  8. When Geocoder is finished running, select the Show Geocode button, and copy and paste that data to an Excel worksheet. Save each politician’s tweet references on its own CSV file.
  9. Go to http://finder.geocommons.com/ and import each csv file. Finish processing each file using latitude and longitude coordinates.

Go to http://maker.geocommons.com/ and create one map for all four politicians. Use visual theme, sizes.

Please note this map is based on total tweets by location. It is not total individuals who tweeted with the selected keyword.



View full map

Methodology: Labor, Liberals, Greens, National Party
This methodology is a repeat of the previous except the names of the politicians are replaced with the names of the parties.



View full map

Methodology: Education, Work Choices, Asylum
This methodology is a repeat of the previous except the keywords are: Education OR Schools, Work Choices OR WorkChoices, Immigrant OR Asylum, NTB or Broadband, Environment OR Global Warming, Health OR Doctor, Afghanistan OR Diggers.

Other: Follows
I’m planning on adding two maps to this post tomorrow. One shows the location of followers for Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard and Bob Brown. The other map will include location of tweets relating to certain issues.

Related Posts:

AFL team related Tweets by location

Posted by Laura on Saturday, 17 July, 2010

After I did A map of Team GWS on Facebook, which included a comment in the follow up about Twitter location, I wanted to do a similar map for other AFL teams using Twitter.

The problem is I can’t easily get all the follower data on Twitter in a way that is easy for me to work with. Instead, I used a tool called Searchtastic to get profile information about people who mentioned specific keywords in their Tweets. Searchtastic pulls that information from Twitter’s Search API and then outputs in Excel. Each Twitter search I did I related to a team: #gosaints for St. Kilda, Lions AFL for the Brisbane lions. (I tried to do at least three Twitter searches for each team to maximize my data set size.) The raw data used in this post can be found at AFLTweets.xls. After that was done, I went through the location field and determined the city, state, country for everyone who had listed a location. I then chose a few teams, added up how many references by city and created the map below. With the particular tool I’m using, I can only add about 7 or 8 teams before I can’t add more. The teams in this sample include: Adelaide Crows, Brisbane Lions, Carlton Blues, Collingwood Magpies, Geelong Cats, and St. Kilda Saints.



View full map

Things that strike me as interesting: No one from the Northern Territories and only one person from Tasmania and the ACT tweeted about the AFL. Is this because they have less internet access, fewer people, use social networks other than Twitter, or aren’t interested in AFL and these particular clubs? Western Australia also had tiny representation here with the max people per team from the city being one. The state has two teams but fans of the league in the state weren’t mentioning any of the competition. What also strikes me as interesting is that interest in the AFL in Queensland only goes as far north as Maroochydore. Beyond that, nothing. Brisbane suburbs are also largely absent. I should finish the rest of the teams and see if I can’t get a bigger data set to see if that effects the results at all.

Related Posts:

Socceroos: A creative research data dump (part 3)

Posted by Laura on Saturday, 12 June, 2010

This is the third post in a series of creative research data dumps that relate to the Socceroos.

LinkedIn

League Team Name URL Owner Members Type Access Created Date checked
World Cup Soccer Socceroos Australian Socceroos – Supporters in Business http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1155907 Luis Aleixo 6 Networking Group 1-Nov-08 15-May-10
World Cup Soccer Socceroos Australian Socceroos – Supporters in Business http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1155907 Luis Aleixo 6 Networking Group 1-Nov-08 3-Jun-10

LiveJournal and clones

Service League Interest Date checked People Communities
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 102
Dreamwidth World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 3
Blurty World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 0
InsaneJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 3
DeadJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 1
JournalFen World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 0
scribbld World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 0
Inksome World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 0
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 15-May-10 102
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer australian national soccer team 15-May-10 0
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer aussie national football team 15-May-10 0
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 28-May-10 102
Dreamwidth World Cup Soccer Socceroos 28-May-10 3
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 3-Jun-10 102 6
Dreamwidth World Cup Soccer Socceroos 7-Jun-10 3 0

This table looks at activity patterns for LJ comms…

Service League Interest Date checked Community name Created on Last updated Comments received Account type Journal entries Tags Memories Virtual gifts Userpics Maintainers Members Watched by
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 the_socceroos 23-Jun-06 Never updated 0 Basic 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 4
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 tim_cahill 18-Nov-05 1-Jul-07 83 Basic 26 0 0 0 1 1 29 25
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 ozsoccer 1-Jun-06 20-May-08 620 Basic 78 0 0 0 3 1 76 65
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 14-May-10 harrykewell_7 4-Jan-07 3-Nov-08 271 Basic 137 13 0 0 5 1 72 68
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 28-May-10 tim_cahill 18-Nov-05 1-Jul-07 83 Basic 26 0 0 0 1 1 29 25
LiveJournal World Cup Soccer Socceroos 28-May-10 the_socceroos 23-Jun-06 Never updated 0 Basic 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 4
LiveJournal AFL Brisbane Broncos 1-Jun-10 brisbanelions 30-Apr-05 30-Apr-05 1 Basic 0 0 0 0 0 1 5 6

MySpace

Service League Interest People Artists Music Videos Albums Songs Videos Images Date gathered
MySpace World Cup Soccer Socceroos 20 12 1 1 1 66 500 14-May-10

Age break down of some accounts’s friends…

League Team Account Date checked Total friends Age: 18-24 Age: 25-29 Age: 30-35 Age: 36-40 Age: 40+
World Cup Socceroos socceroos 28-May-10 769 303 125 42 11 66
Women’s World Cup Matildas matildasonline 28-May-10 8 5 1 2 0 0

Orkut

Service League Team Interest Users Communities Topics Date gathered Notes
orkut World Cup Socceroos Socceroos 36 14 628 5-Jun-10
orkut World Cup All Whites "All Whites" 14 1 319 5-Jun-10 Not all references are to the football team.
orkut Women’s World Cup Matildas Matildas 14 2 124 5-Jun-10 Not all references are to the football team.

Twitter
Looking for growth information…

Service League Team Account Date collected Total followers
Twitter World Cup Socceroos Socceroos 8-Mar-10 353
Twitter World Cup Socceroos socceroos_news (unofficial) 8-Mar-10 1 099
Twitter World Cup Socceroos Socceroos 28-May-10 1 952
Twitter World Cup Socceroos Socceroos 29-May-10 1965
Twitter World Cup Socceroos Socceroos 30-May-10 1 998
Twitter World Cup Socceroos socceroos_news (unofficial) 30-May-10 1 668
Twitter World Cup Socceroos socceroos_news (unofficial) 1-Jun-10 1907
Twitter World Cup Socceroos Socceroos 1-Jun-10 2077
Twitter World Cup Socceroos GGArmy (unofficial) 2-Jun-10 357
Twitter World Cup Socceroos socceroos_news (unofficial) 2-Jun-10 1 701
Twitter World Cup Socceroos Socceroos 2-Jun-10 2 165
Twitter World Cup Socceroos HalfTimeHeroes (soccer fansite) 9-Jun-10 293
Twitter World Cup Socceroos GGArmy (unofficial) 10-Jun-10 390
Twitter World Cup Socceroos socceroos_news (unofficial) 10-Jun-10 1 775
Twitter World Cup Socceroos Socceroos 10-Jun-10 2 661
Twitter World Cup Socceroos HalfTimeHeroes (soccer fansite) 10-Jun-10 293

YouTube

Service League Interest Videos Date gathered
YouTube World Cup Soccer Socceroos 1 760 14-May-10
YouTube World Cup Soccer "All Blacks" 13 200 14-May-10
YouTube Basketball Australia Australian Boomers 98 14-May-10
YouTube Basketball Australia Australian Opals 538 14-May-10
YouTube World Cup Soccer "All Whites" 429 14-May-10

Related Posts:

Issues with social media metrics: Twitter

Posted by Laura on Saturday, 5 June, 2010

I apologize in advance.  This is a stream of conscious rant about various Twitter metrics and analysis that take part in social media.  It is a result of seeing one too many posts about meaning from metrics that I see as meaningless.   This may become a series where I explain problems with other metrics.

Ever see a social media person talk about measuring ROI on Twitter?  The focus tends to be on two major metrics: Total follower count and total retweets.  Whenever I see a consultant advocating the first as a meaningful metric, I want to tell the world that they should not hire that person.  Brand awareness is important.  That’s why companies pay for naming rights of stadiums, even if the ROI is questionable or hard to measure.  Twitter just doesn’t work that way: Getting a follower does not translate into name recognition for your brand, website, interest or self.  Okay, it might…  but not if the goal is to get as many followers as possible.  Here I am defining many as 1,000+.  If everyone who follows you has 1,000+ people they follow, the chance of you getting your message across to them where they will see it are slim to none. (1)   A system that encourages you to go out and seek likely follow backs generally relies on getting them from those 1,000+ follows people.  It becomes a great big circle of following in order to build up followers.    Big deal: You have 10,000 followers, who all have 10,000 followers who never read each other’s tweets.  No brand recognition there.  No personal connection.  No traffic generation.

Instead of total number of followers, the metric you want to measure is the average number of followers for the people that follow you.  Your ideal is a number between 50 and 250.  This generally indicates that the person has a commitment to check Twitter regularly to see what people they follow are doing and have people that will check to see what they are updating.  It means that if you post a tweet, chances are these people will have that Tweet visible on their timeline for at least ten minutes, up to possibly an hour.  Less then 50 follows indicates a person probably isn’t checking Twitter regularly.  More than 250 means much less visibility for you if they are reading their entire timeline.  It also means that their is the potential that the person running the account is using a tool to manage their timeline so that they may never read you.  If you want to get read on Twitter (the rational for getting more followers), you’ve got to target those who will read you to begin with.

Instead of total followers, if you’re a bricks and mortar business, you want a metric of how many of your followers live in areas where your market is.  This, like the average total number of follows your followers have, is not an easy number to get.  If you’re a minor league team in the United States, your market is largely going to be people who live with in an hour or two of your home grounds.  If your team has a relationship with a team up or down the ladder, your market may extend to that area.  Your market may also extend to where places where players from your team originate.  These people are likely to purchase tickets to your game, attend games on the road, listen or watch games over streaming audio or video, or buy merchandise based on your team.  Identify those locations or categories of followers and count them.  Ignore those followers who don’t.  Count the person who lives in your town: Do not count the fly fishing business from Canada, or the follower from Brazil who never mentions your sport and only tweets about Justin Beiber.  The second two, unless you have evidence to the contrary, are not going to convert into any sort of sales or provide a relationship that can further your own goals.  There is nothing wrong with having those followers (2)  even if they provide you with nothing back in return.  Just don’t try to get them by following large numbers of people.  What’s the easiest way to count people in your market?  Follow them and only them back.  If you just want to follow a few people, add people in your market to a list.  This makes the number really, really easy to keep track of as you just have to keep track of new followers that Twitter e-mails you about.  If people didn’t make it on your list the first time, you can add them to your list or to your follows when they retweet you or @ reply you.  Total people following you in your market counts 100 times more than the person not in your market who you likely won’t convert into a potential sale, job or viewer.

Why do people use total followers rather than average number of follows their followers have or the total number of potential people in their market?  They generally do that because the first metric is easy to get a number for.  The second and third ones are pretty hard to get at this time.  Just because a metric is easy to get doesn’t mean it is the right one to use.  In this case, try to spend the time to get the more meaningful number.  That way you know your message is actually getting out to the people who matter.

While I’m on this topic of Twitter follower counts as a metric, here is another one to consider for a special subset of people who mention their social media prowess, with all the details about how to do that available on their website.  When I say their website, I mean that thing they cross promote on Twitter and LinkedIn and on other social networks.  For them, there exists a special metric: Ratio of Twitter followers to the total unique visitors Compete says that they have to their site.  I chose Compete because it actually gives you a number and heavy social media users are more likely to have Compete installed on their browser.  (3)  Given that, the measurement for traffic to their site should actually be higher than it actually is… but I digress.  Twitter followers/Website traffic.  Important metric.  Ideally, the number should be less than one.  If it is greater than one, it says that the person running the Twitter account does not effectively promote what matters: Themselves.  People don’t want to read what that person has to say in any depth.  Twitter followers aren’t clicking on the person’s links.  Followers aren’t sharing links to that person’s content with their own Twitter followers or Facebook friends or linking to it on their blog.  If a person really matters, with a few notable exceptions (4), people will want to follow their links.   The measure of 34,000 Twitter followers/6,000 monthly visitors thus is incredibly meaningful.  It says that the person can get followers but they can’t convert that into traffic: People aren’t interested in more meaningful dialog with the account owner.

Moving on to that second Twitter metric that people like to talk up: ReTweets.  There is nothing wrong with this number and can be useful in terms of determining how entertaining or useful people find the content you’re putting out on Twitter. (5)   It is just one of those metrics that people treat as if it exists in isolation and that’s where it becomes less meaningful.  First, before even beginning to look at the number, ask yourself an important question: Why do you want your content ReTweeted?  If your goal is to use Twitter ReTweets to convert into sales or page views to your site, then 5,000 ReTweets which result in zero sales or zero visits means that your failure rate is 5,000.  Who cares if you get 5,000 ReTweets if it doesn’t help you meet your goal?  If your goal is to use ReTweets to start a conversation and no one @ replies to you or goes to your blog to have a conversation with you, then your ReTweet campaign wasn’t successful. ReTweet metrics are only useful as they pertain to helping achieve other measurable goals.  A ReTweet totals metric, absent another metric, is a number about ego boosts and helping with your own self worth on Twitter.

Other metrics people like to mention for Twitter include total mentions.  The more mentions you get, the more times the tag you created gets used, the better it is for your brand in gaining recognition.  This is great in theory as a measurement tool.  What it ignores is sentiment analysis.  If you can get users to tag 50,000 of their tweets, that could be great brand recognition.  At the same time, it could mean some one else highjacked your messaged for shits and giggles.  (6)  It could also have been highjacked by people who have complaints about your service or product. 50,000 tweets do you very little good if 45,000 are from an angry mob.  If you’re doing a campaign involving ReTweets or mentioning a tag, some people can and do take that too far.  Your audience of tag user may flood their Twitter feed with your message so often that they piss off people into unfollowing them.  That hurts your reach.  Another brand could highjack your tag to promote their related product.  Sentiment and audience reaction ultimately matter more than sheer numbers.  If you can count the total of positive, negative, neutral, highjacked posts using a tag, that number will be more helpful than total mentions.

The major Twitter metrics have serious flaws.  They don’t tell the whole story and often provide a misleading picture.  The only way for these metrics to work is for them to be broken down into smaller, more harder to measure numbers that answer how the measure helps you measure your market.  And please encourage people to stop promoting ineffective measures.  Just because it is an easy number to get doesn’t make it worth using: People shouldn’t be paying for that.  Flawed data is flawed and the industry as a whole is hurt when we constantly allow bad practices to continue.


1. I follow 300 people. I’m in Australia. I can’t keep up with all my American friends when they are busy tweeting while I’m asleep and I don’t have nearly that many followers.

2. Why?  Because everyone thinks that number matter and it doesn’t hurt to have followers who don’t do anything for you.

3. Alexa doesn’t give real traffic volume.  It just gives a ranking compared to other sites.  As we’re comparing Twitter followers to visitors to a site, using Alexa for comparison purposes doesn’t work.

4. Stuff My Dad Says, the BP satire updates, celebrities are all examples where this doesn’t work.  Brick and mortar websites also may be an exception as you can put some content on aggragate services like Facebook and Foursquare.  Bricks and mortar stores can use those discounts on those sites to measure the effectiveness of their campaign.   Websites and content providers?  Not so much.  If you’re reading this, you’re probably not an exception.

5.  In that regard, it is actually a bit more useful than total followers are.  There are fewer bot/indiscriminate ReTweeters/spammers than there are bot/indiscriminate followers/spammers.

6. Yes, this does happen. And it doesn’t always include the usual suspects.

Related Posts:

Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.

Posted by Laura on Monday, 31 May, 2010

This post is basically an update of Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers. I haven’t actively sought to improve or update the accounts included on this list though there are a few new accounts.  A few accounts have been deleted and one has been suspended, LanceFranklin. Deleted and suspended accounts have been marked with a 0 for total number of followers.

This data was gathered on May 30, 2010.  It includes non-Australian teams that compete in Australian based leagues.  It also contains Australian some athlete accounts where the athlete competes for a club in an Australian based league.

League Team Account Total followers
First class cricket New South Wales Blues PH408 (unofficial) 11902
Super 14 Pretoria Bulls (Northern Bulls) VictorMatfield (unofficial) 7452
Super 14 Natal Sharks JohnSmit123 (unofficial) 7221
NRL Wests Tigers LoteTuqiri (unofficial) 6688
NRL NRL NRL 5469
AFL Essendon Bombers Essendon_FC 5242
AFL Collingwood Magpies Collingwood_FC 5183
AFL Adelaide Crows Adelaide_FC 5008
AFL Melbourne Demons jimstynes (unofficial) 4476
AFL Sydney Swans sydneyswans 4340
AFL Essendon Bombers JobeWatson (unofficial) 4284
AFL Collingwood Magpies harry_o (unofficial) 4174
AFL Essendon Bombers AngusMonfries (unofficial) 3801
Super 14 Wellington Hurricanes Hurricanesrugby 3696
NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons RealBigDell (unofficial) 3688
AFL St. Kilda Saints stkildafc 3351
Super 14 Wellington Hurricanes neyza3 (unofficial) 3330
AFL Carlton Blues Carlton_FC 3223
NRL Gold Coast Titans mat_rogers6 (unofficial) 3056
Super 14 Canterbury Crusaders mornesteyn (unofficial) 2790
AFL Geelong Cats Geelong_FC (unofficial) 2667
Super 14 Queensland Reds QuadeCooper (unofficial) 2363
NRL Brisbane Broncos BrisBroncosClub 2322
AFL Richmond Tigers Richmond_FC 2085
NRL Gold Coast Titans GCTitans 2052
AFL Hawthorn Hawks HawthornFC 2031
AFL Melbourne Demons nathan2jones (unofficial) 2019
World Cup Socceroos Socceroos 1998
NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) nzwarriors (unofficial) 1959
A-League Melbourne Victory gomvfc 1959
AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos northkangaroos 1891
World Cup Socceroos socceroos_news (unofficial) 1668
Super 14 Cape Town Stormers (Western Stormers) THESTORMERS 1652
NRL Parramatta Eels jarryd_hayne (unofficial) 1643
Super 14 Wellington Hurricanes Powza13 (unofficial) 1619
First class cricket New South Wales Blues NBRACKEN142 (unofficial) 1559
NRL North Queensland Cowboys northqldcowboys 1544
AFL Melbourne Demons CamSchwab (unofficial) 1542
AFL Port Adelaide Power PAFC 1539
AFL Melbourne Demons DemonsHQ (official) 1522
Super 14 Durban Sharks (Coastal Sharks)(Natal Sharks) sharksrugby 1521
AFL West Coast Eagles WCEofficial 1475
NRL Wests Tigers Wests_Tigers (unofficial) 1440
AFL Hawthorn Hawks Hawks_AFL (unofficial) 1396
NBL Melbourne Tigers Follow24Hodge (unofficial) 1338
First class cricket New South Wales Blues ClarkeVC (unofficial) 1268
NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs SSFCRABBITOHS 1263
ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens MelbourneVixens 1232
AFL Fremantle Dockers Fremantle_FC 1232
First class cricket Victorian Bushrangers Bushrangers 1189
NRL Manly Sea Eagles manlyseaeagles 1129
NRL Melbourne Storm MelbStormRLC (official) 1124
NBL Adelaide 36ers Adelaide36ers 1030
AFL Gold Coast Football Club GoldCoastFC 1001
NRL Sydney Roosters sydroosters (unofficial) 995
Super 14 Canterbury Crusaders crusadersrugby 962
AFL Brisbane Lions ALFbrisbane (unofficial) 908
AFL Collingwood Magpies PeterDaicos (unofficial) 903
A-League Melbourne Victory mitchlangerak (unofficial) 881
NRL Penrith Panthers penrithpanthers (unofficial) 840
NRL Parramatta Eels parramatta_eels 838
A-League Central Coast Mariners Football Club LawrieMcKinna 815
A-League Central Coast Mariners Football Club LawrieMcKinna (unofficial) 815
AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos andrewswallow (unofficial) 810
Super 14 New South Wales Waratahs HSBCWaratahs 772
NBL Wollongong Hawks wollongonghawks 757
NRL Melbourne Storm MelbourneStorm_ (unofficial) 750
A-League Melbourne Victory adrianleijer (unofficial) 745
A-League North Queensland Fury FC nqfuryfc 744
Super 14 Queensland Reds RedsRugby (unofficial) 732
ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens SharelleVixens 724
Super 14 Queensland Reds Reds_Rugby 705
NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs rabbitohs (unofficial) 699
Super 14 ACT Brumbies BrumbiesRugby 683
NRL Parramatta Eels PirtekParraEels (unofficial) 670
AFL Collingwood Magpies collingwoodnews (unofficial) 649
Super 14 Natal Sharks KeeganDaniel (unofficial) 632
First class cricket Queensland Bulls andrew_symonds (unofficial) 608
NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs therabbitohs (unofficial) 605
NBL Perth Wildcats perthwildcats 591
AFL Collingwood Magpies bigdyman (unofficial) 568
A-League Melbourne Victory victoryinmelb 552
NBL New Zealand Breakers johnrillie (unofficial) 537
AFL West Coast Eagles wingsofperth (unofficial) 536
NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) thenzwarriors 521
AFL Fremantle Dockers Freo_Dockers (unofficial) 519
NBL South Dragons Joeingles7 (unofficial) 516
NRL Gold Coast Titans AshHarrison1 (unofficial) 498
NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs benross23 (unofficial) 487
AFL St. Kilda Saints njbrown17 (unofficial) 481
A-League Brisbane Roar BNERoar (unofficial) 471
NSW Premier League Sydney Olympic MarkBosnich (unofficial) 470
Super 14 Melbourne Rebels melbournerebels 469
NRL Gold Coast Titans lukeodwyer (unofficial) 467
Basketball Australia Australian Boomers aussieboomers 465
AFL Fremantle Dockers FremantleFC (unofficial) 453
A-League Newcastle Jets newcastle_jets 441
A-League Adelaide United adelaideunited 423
NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks SharksOnline (unofficial) 422
A-League Sydney FC SFCNews (unofficial) 421
A-League Perth Glory PerthGlory_FC 414
Netball Australia Netball Australia NetballAust 377
NRL Canberra Raiders RaidersCanberra 375
NRL Parramatta Eels PlanetEels (unofficial) 374
A-League Adelaide United adelaidereds 350
ANZ Championship Queensland Firebirds laurafirebirds (unofficial) 338
NRL Brisbane Broncos broncosbigfan (unofficial) 336
First class cricket Tassie Tigers crickettas 328
NBL Wollongong Hawks milisimic (unofficial) 327
NBL Perth Wildcats nickmarvin (unofficial) 322
NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons mighty_dragons (unofficial) 321
NBL Townsville Crocodiles TsvCrocs 313
NBL Melbourne Tigers Wortho33 (unofficial) 313
A-League Wellington Phoenix wgtnphoenixfc 307
Netball Victoria Netball Victoria netballvic 306
A-League Brisbane Roar brisbaneroar 305
ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds NatTbirds 304
AFL West Coast Eagles WestCoastEagles (unofficial) 294
NBL Townsville Crocodiles chomicide (unofficial) 287
NBL Cairns Taipans Dusty_Rychart (unofficial) 283
AFL Brisbane Lions AFLBrisbaneFC 283
NRL Parramatta Eels blueandgoldarmy (unofficial) 280
NRL Brisbane Broncos BrisbaneBronco (unofficial) 274
ANZ Championship New South Wales Swifts SusanSwifts 263
AFL Melbourne Demons MelbourneFC (unofficial) 263
NRL Manly Sea Eagles gorgeousgrose (unofficial) 248
AFL West Coast Eagles MitchJbrown17 (unofficial) 242
Netball Australia Australian Diamonds (national team) AussieDiamonds 242
NRL Wests Tigers fakebrycegibbs (unofficial) 222
NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks Fergo1990 (unofficial) 220
First class cricket New South Wales Blues eddiecowan (unofficial) 213
AFL Essendon Bombers essendonfc (unofficial) 212
NBL New Zealand Breakers oscarforman (unofficial) 203
A-League Gold Coast United GCUSC 202
Super 14 ACT Brumbies Hoilesy (unofficial) 201
NRL Brisbane Broncos broncobasher (unofficial) 200
Rugby League/State of Origin New South Wales Blues NSWRL 198
First class cricket South Australian Redbacks (Southern Redbacks) RedbacksT20 196
A-League Central Coast Mariners Football Club CCMarinersFC (unofficial) 183
NBL Perth Wildcats TheRealSchensh (unofficial) 179
First class cricket Victorian Bushrangers petersiddle (unofficial) 171
ANZ Championship New South Wales Swifts nswswifts 171
NBL Townsville Crocodiles rustyhinder (unofficial) 168
Super 14 Western Australia Force (Western Force) s14_force 163
Basketball Australia Australian Opals AustralianOpals 160
NRL Parramatta Eels 1eyedeel (unofficial) 159
Super 14 Queensland Reds s14_queensland (unofficial) 153
WNBL WNBL WNBL 152
NBL New Zealand Breakers NZBreakers 152
AFL Sydney Swans BionicSwan (unofficial) 151
Rugby League/State of Origin Queensland Maroons QLD_Maroons 144
A-League Melbourne Victory victorytwit (unofficial) 144
VFL Casey Scorpions CaseyScorpions 144
Super 14 Central Cheetahs (Vodacom Cheetahs) VodacomCheetahs 141
ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds AdelaideTBirds 135
VFL North Ballarat Roosters NB_Roosters 134
NBL Adelaide 36ers DarrenNg8 (unofficial) 128
AFL Fremantle Dockers ryanmcrowley (unofficial) 124
AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos Marcus__White (unofficial) 121
A-League Melbourne Victory mvfcfanzone 114
AFL Hawthorn Hawks bmsew (unofficial) 113
NBL Adelaide 36ers jgovereasy (unofficial) 113
NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons jsaffy (unofficial) 111
NRL Newcastle Knights Corypato (unofficial) 110
Australia Athletics Australian Flames (national team) australianflame 108
NRL Balmain Tigers tigers1908 (unofficial) 106
ANZ Championship West Coast Fever SusanWCFever 93
AFL St. Kilda Saints RWBFooty (unofficial) 93
Gridiron Australia Nationals Perth Blitz fatloaf (unofficial) 91
AFL Melbourne Demons matesOmelbourne (unofficial) 90
AFL Western Bulldogs ccaallward (unofficial) 88
Netball New South Wales Sydney_Netball 88
First class cricket Queensland Bulls qldcricket 81
NBL Sydney Kings sydneykings 73
AFL Fremantle Dockers briansham (unofficial) 71
A-League Sydney FC SydneyFC 69
AFL Richmond Tigers yellow_n_black (unofficial) 67
SFL Caulfield Bears CaulfieldBears 66
NBL Townsville Crocodiles JoshJenkins24 (unofficial) 65
AFL Melbourne Demons demonwiki (unofficial) 65
NBL Adelaide 36ers BenFitz (unofficial) 64
Semi Professional Basketball League Semi Professional Basketball League SEABL 58
NRL Gold Coast Titans Aaron_Cannings (unofficial) 57
NBL Adelaide 36ers 36ers (unofficial) 55
NBL South (Melbourne) Dragons SAVEOURDRAGONS (unofficial) 49
AFL Collingwood Magpies VictoriaParkHC (unofficial) 49
Claxton Shield Barbagallo Perth Heat PerthHeat 48
NBL Wollongong Hawks danjackson9 (unofficial) 39
NBL Townsville Crocodiles Kegs42 (unofficial) 39
AFL Essendon Bombers bomberblitz (unofficial) 37
NSW Premier League Manly United ManlyUnited 35
WNBL Bendio Spirit bendigospirit 35
NBL Townsville Crocodiles willo43 (unofficial) 34
NRL Parramatta Eels parraeels (unofficial) 33
NBL Gold Coast Blaze Vandy21 (unofficial) 33
Netball New South Wales Petersham RUFC Netball Club PetershamNetbal 32
Brisbane Netball Association ACE Netball Club ACENetball 31
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WNBL Dandenong Jayco Rangers JaycoRangers 30
AFL Fremantle Dockers bc8977 (unofficial) 20
VFL Port Melbourne Borough BoroughBoy (unofficial) 19
NBL Townsville Crocodiles ToffCedar (unofficial) 16
NBL Townsville Crocodiles cameronwhiting (unofficial) 12
WNBL Logan Thunder loganthunder 11
NBL Adelaide 36ers brad_393 (unofficial) 6
Gridiron Australia Nationals Perth Blitz perthblitz 1
NRL Wests Tigers beauryan_winger (unofficial) 0
NSW Premier League Sydney United addsie (unofficial) 0
A-League Sydney FC SydneyFC0910 0
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A-League Melbourne Victory MVFCVIDEOS (unofficial) 0
AFL Melbourne Demons jordiemck (unofficial) 0
AFL Hawthorn Hawks LanceFranklin (unofficial) 0
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AFL Brisbane Lions AFLbrisbanelion 0

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Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 20 May, 2010

A copy of this can be found in PDF form at : http://ozziesport.com/storm.pdf .  The pdf version that includes footnotes that explain the methodology used and contain additional links.


Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy

By Laura Hale, University of Canberra

On April 22, 2010, the news of salary cap violations on the part of the Melbourne Storm broke online in such publications as the Fox Sports, on television including ABC news and on multiple social networks including Facebook and Twitter. By April 23, the news was available in various print publications including The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. During the news coverage, NRL fans learned that the team had been fined $1.8 million, stripped of two premiereships and were not eligible to earn points towards 2010’s premiership. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010) The team was being punished for salary cap violations over the past five years, where the total cap violation in that period was $1.7 million with $400,000 of that total cap violation occurring in 2009. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010)

Early in the coverage of the Melbourne Storm, several issues were discussed including the impact this would have on the fan base for the team, the subsequent economic fallout for Storm and other clubs in the league, and if the players would try to leave the club or lower their performance level. The consequences that people feared have yet to bear out: The fan base for the Melbourne Storm has grown, attendance has not fallen, membership is up and players have not left the team and the team continues to win.

This article will examine the online response to the Melbourne Storm controversy. Specifically, it will look at the interest patterns on several networks, follow patterns on Twitter and Facebook, and activity levels on 43things, wikis and Yahoo!Groups. It will prove that, on the whole, the controversy has not eroded the online fanbase for the team and has resulted in an increased profile for the team in ways can have a net positive for the team and their sponsors.


Profile Interest

One way to quickly gage online interest for a team is to check the number of people who list them as an interest on social networks that include that option. The level of interest on a network will, in general, increase over time. Including an interest is a rather passive activity that most people do at the time that they signup on a service. They may update their interests once a year when they do an overhaul on their profile. Other factors may result in an update of interests, most notably a desire to associate or disassociate with certain people and organizations. The latter can generally require a certain amount of rage and disillusionment and does not happen that often. For adding interests, it can require a certain degree of wanting to stand in solidarity with some one or thing in the face of perceived oppression. Adding or removing an interest will generally require a large emotional response in people to motivate them to change their interests on social networks where an individual has not been active in the past six months. These conditions mean that numbers for interests are relatively stable or increase. A big shift downward is possible but unlikely.

Did the Melbourne Storm controversy result in people being motivated to update their interests to include or exclude the team? Yes and no, many people added them as an interest on Facebook but the numbers remained level across several other networks.

As of January 9, 2010, 17,020 had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest on Facebook. By May 9, 2010, this number had increased to 41,240, or 24,220 new people. From January 9 to May 9, 2010, there was also an increase of roughly 120 fans within fifty miles of Hobart adding the team as an interest, going from less than 20 to 140. Canberra saw a similar increase in fans, going from 140 on January 9 to 1,020 by May 9, 2010, an increase of 880 new people listing the team as an interest. For fans within fifty miles of Cranbourne, there was an increase of 5,540 fans going from 7,140 fans on January 9 to 12,580 fans on May 9, 2010. Some of this increase on Facebook can be possibly attributed to a change in Facebook in mid-April, where people were encouraged to add their interests as likes of fanpages and vice versa. (Albanesius, 2010) It cannot entirely explain the shift as the official Melbourne Storm page is a user page, not a fan page so the interest to liking will not be automatically converted. At the same time, the number of people listing the team as an interest is roughly ten times as many who follow the Storm’s official Facebook profile and suggests that interest listing is independent of following the official team presence.

In addition to the Melbourne Storm interest on Facebook, there have been two new interests related to the storm created in the wake of the controversy: “Shame On You Melbourne Storm” with fewer than twenty people listing it as an interest, and “Sucked In Melbourne Storm Haha” with 3,240 people listing it as an interest. The latter definitely connects to a Facebook fanpage with the same name, which has 8,432 people who like it.

While Facebook saw an explosion in growth of people listing the team as an interest, other sites allowing interest listing on profiles remained stagnant or saw limited growth. This includes bebo, where there has been no change as of April 28 and May 9 from 402 people that was originally recorded on March 18, 2010. Blogger saw some growth for the number of people listing the team as an interest. As of January 18, 2010, four people had listed the team. By May 9, 2010, six people had listed them as an interest. As the time frame is wider than that of bebo, it might be possible to account for the increase as a pre-season boost, rather than in response to the controversy. Either way, this was an increase of fifty percent for new people listing the team as an interest.

LiveJournal saw no growth in people listing the team as an interest between January 10 and May 9, 2010. Of the 25 LiveJournal accounts listing the Melbourne Storm as an interest, only five have updated since the controversy broke. LiveJournal’s clones including Dreamwidth, Blurty and DeadJournal also saw no growth as of May 9. This contrasts to the Brisbane Broncos on LiveJournal, where one person removed the team as an interest during a similar period. Dreamwidth had two users listing the team as an interest as of January 9, Blurty had one user as of January 9, and DeadJournal had one user as of December 23, 2009. None of the people on LiveJournal’s clones who list the Storm as an interest have updated their journals since the controversy happened. The most recent updates occurred on Dreamwidth, taking place in early March 2010. The other account last updated in April 2009. The Blurty account last updated in November 2005 and the DeadJournal account last updated in January 2006.

One or two smaller niche networks have limited interest for specific teams or where people only list the NRL as an interest. This includes BlackPlanet, generally targeted at African Americans inside the United States. There was one person who listed the NRL as an interest on the network as of February 15, 2010. This has not changed as of May 9. Care2 is a social networked targeted at people who wish to make the world a better place. As of March 20, 2010, no one had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest. This changed by May 9, when three people listed the team as an interest. Given the names, limited profiles and join dates, it is possible that these accounts are all tied to one individual. Gaia Online is a small, niche network for role players. As of March 11, 2010, no one had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest. There is interest in the NRL on the network as people listed the Brisbane Lions, Canberra Raiders, Parramatta Eels and Sydney Roosters as interests. There has not been any change for any of these teams as of May 9. The limited growth and lack of pull back could suggest that larger interest in the NRL has not been diminished on smaller networks as a result of the controversy.


Wiki Activity

Wikis are, at their most basic, web sites where visitors can easily edit the content of the site. Sometimes, there are limits to who can edit put in place by the creator of a wiki. These include requiring users to register or confirm an e-mail before they edit, or to get their account approved by the admin before they can edit. Some wikis have policies when breaking news happen or an article gets trolled to lock down the article so only registered users can edit or wiki admins can edit. The culture of editing on specific wikis thus develops around the who can edit process as locking down wikis to prevent edits can effect the frequency that an article is updated.

For comprehensive wiki articles, the ideal is to have to have editors who approach the topic from different perspectives, where there is inherent conflict in the content and perspective being presented. If this situation does not exist, an article can be highjacked by one or two editors who seek to push their own perspective. The more edits and people involved in contributing to the article, the less likely the article will be biased. This also makes vandalism less problematic as people are incentivized to quickly remove that material.

Wikis can be a good tool for gauging interest in a particular topic over time as most wiki software keeps a record of all edits to a page. For some of the big wikis, like Wikipedia, data also exists for how many views an article has over a certain time period. This can help track more passive community interest in a topic.

Wikipedia’s English language article about the Melbourne Storm is probably the most visited wiki article about the team and appears third in Google’s search results for the team. The article, found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on May 23, 2004. As of May 9, 2010, the article had 1,732 total edits made to it. The controversy involving the Melbourne Storm broke on April 22, 2010. 1,471 of the edits were made prior to that. In the period between the article’s creation and the day before the controversy broke, an average of .681 edits per day were made to the article. In the eighteen-day period since the controversy broke, an average of 14.5 edits per day were made to the article. The vast majority of these edits were made in the first three days, with 90 edits made on April 22, 56 edits made on April 23 and 69 edits made on April 24. On April 24, in response to repeated vandalism, the article was semi-protected; this meant that only registered users who had confirmed their e-mail could edit the article. The protection had the effect of reducing the total number of daily edits to the article. After that, peak editing days included April 26 and May 3 with seven edits, and April 25 and May 5 with six edits. There were zero edits on April 28, May 6, May 7 and May 9. The controversy certainly caused an increase in the number of edits. If the day that the controversy broke and the next two days are excluded, the average number of daily edits is 3.06 edits per day. This is still higher than the period prior to the controversy and the trend will probably continue at least until the end of the season.

The article views per day mirrors the total edits by day. Based on data provided by Henrick (2010, May 1 and May 9), there is a correlation of .904 between the total daily edits and the total daily page views. According to Henrick (2010, May 1) during April 2010, the article was viewed a total of 49,540 times. Of these views, 40,355 views were between April 22, when the story broke, and April 30. The peak day for visits was on April 22, when the article was viewed 14,800 times. The average page views between April 22 and April 30 was 4,482 views per day. If this period is extended out to include data provided by Henrick (2010, May 9) for May 1 to May 8, the average views per day is 2,700. If the three days around when the controversy first broke are excluded, the average edits per day drops to 1,143. This stands in contrast to the period between April 1 and April 21 where the average page views per day was 438. The above average page views trend appears to be continuing. There has not been a decrease in overall interest in the Melbourne Storm on English Wikipedia.

In addition to the English language article about the Melbourne Storm on Wikipedia, there are articles in two other languages: French and Italian. The French language article, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on March 1, 2006. Since the controversy started on April 22 and May 8, there have been 35 total edits to the article. Unlike the English language article, total edits per day peaked on April 24, 2010 with 19 with the second highest editing day occurring on April 23 with 7. The average total edits per day during this period was 2.1. In April, prior to the controversy, the average edits per day was zero. Also unlike the English language article, it was not locked because of vandalism. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 1) peak views per day happened on April 23 and April 24 with 59. The next day with the greatest number of views in the period between April 22 and May 8 is May 8 with 34. The average viewed per day in the April 22 to May 8 period was 17.4 and the average viewed per day in April prior to the controversy was 3.4. The correlation between the total edits per day and views per day in the period between April 1 and May 8 is .7740. The French Wikipedia article saw an increase that was proportionally bigger than the English article but the total views and edits were much smaller on the French article.

The Italian language Wikipedia article, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on December 21, 2007. The article had two edits in 2008 and one in 2009. Since the controversy broke on April 22 and May 8, there have two edits to the article. These two edits are the only edits made during 2010. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 1) , the total number of article views from April 1 to April 21 was 30. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 8), the total number of page views per day was 58. The day with the most views was April 23, with 14 views. The next day with the most views was May 3, with 8 views. The Italian Wikipedia article saw an increase in the total number of edits and page views as a result of the controversy. It might have been larger but the Italian interest in the team is much smaller to start with than the French or English language communities.

Outside of Wikipedia, there are a few small wikis that focus on the NRL and Rugby League. These wikis generally lack detailed information on the daily total page views but still provide information on the editing history. One such wiki is the NRL Central Wiki that is hosted on Wikia. It has an article about the Melbourne Storm located at http://nrl.wikia.com/wiki/Melbourne_Storm. The article was created on August 13, 2009 and was last updated on October 10, 2009. It has not been updated since the controversy. The wiki the article is hosted has only had three non-bot edits in the past 30 days so the lack of updates is not surprising. A few other wikis have articles that mention the Melbourne Storm. Most of these are institutional wikis where article histories are not available or where content is posted by its creator and never intended to be edited by a wider audience. There does not appear to be a movement by wikis to create additional content in response to or to try to capitalize on interest in response to the controversy.


Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging service. Users can post 140 character messages , called tweets, that are shared with anyone who chooses to follow them. Twitter is one of the most well known and popular social networks in Australia.

There are two main ways to measure Twitter activity. The first is to keep track of the total followers an account has. The second way is to monitor the total number of daily tweets posted about a topic posted across the whole network and by specific accounts.

The Melbourne Storm have an official Twitter account at @MelbStormRLC . There is an unofficial Melbourne Storm Twitter account run by a fansite at @MelbourneStorm_ . As of March 9, 2010, the official account had 458 followers. This contrasts with @MelbourneStorm_ which had 605 followers as of March 8, 2010. By May 10, about nineteen days after the controversy broke, the official account had 1,037 followers and @ MelbourneStorm_ had 720 followers. That was an increase of 579 and 115 followers respectively. The situation has not hurt growth for either account and people are still interested in keeping up with the team and what they are doing.

When compared to the official Twitter accounts for the NRL, Gold Coast Titans, Manly Sea Eagles, North Queensland Cowboys, Parramatta Eels, Canberra Raiders, South Sydney Rabbitohs and New Zealand Warriors, the follower growth for the Melbourne Storm suggests a potential connection to the controversy creating additional interest or a fanbase that has become much more interested in Twitter in a short period of time. (Table 1) The only account with a greater increase in total number of followers is the NRL, which picked up 942 followers. The Melbourne Storm saw a fifty-five percent increase in the new followers. The next closest team of the aforementioned in the same period was the Canberra Raiders who saw a forty-two percent increase. In this context, it reaffirms that additional interest in the team was likely generated by the controversy.

Table 1

Twitter Follower Counts by Official Club Accounts and Date
Team Account
9-Mar-10

10-May-10

Difference

% increase
Gold Coast Titans GCTitans
1,616

1,950

334

17.13%
Manly Sea Eagles manlyseaeagles
888

1,073

185

17.24%
Melbourne Storm MelbStormRLC
458

1,037

579

55.83%
North Queensland Cowboys northqldcowboys
1,403

1,588

185

11.65%
NRL NRL
4,231

5,173

942

18.21%
Parramatta Eels parramatta_eels
618

780

162

20.77%
Canberra Raiders RaidersCanberra
202

349

147

42.12%
South Sydney Rabbitohs SSFCRABBITOHS
761

1,139

378

33.19%
New Zealand Warriors thenzwarriors
434

507

73

14.40%


Detailed statistics regarding the total number of references for the Melbourne Storm by day on Twitter are not available. It makes it harder to determine the total daily volume of conversation involving the team in the days surrounding the news leaking about the salary cap violations. People were interested in the Melbourne Storm as the team was briefly trending on Twitter when the story broke. Manual counting can be done but Twitter search only goes back around one week What can be more easily tracked is the posting volume per day of specific accounts related to the Melbourne Storm to compare their activities before and after the controversy broke. In the case of the @MelbourneStorm_, the account does not update regularly with about twenty tweets made during the past year. Their last tweet was on March 24, 2010; they have not posted since the news broke. @MelbStormRLC has posted several tweets since the controversy and has mentioned it. From April 22 to May 9, eighteen days after the story broke, the Storm have made eleven total tweets. Prior to that, the team had made thirteen tweets. The difference in tweet totals is inconsequential. Neither account made changes to their Twitter posting in response in to the controversy.

Searching through Twitter, it is very clear that people are still tweeting about the team and, as of May 10, are tweeting about them at a comparatively higher rate than other teams in the league. One popular way of indicating a tweet is about a certain topic is to include a hashtag in front of a word. This makes the whole phrase easily searchable on Twitter. For example, a person who is tweeting about the Melbourne Storm may include #melbournestorm to indicate the tweet is about the team. There generally fewer of these tweets as a great many accounts on Twitter come directly from RSS feeds. These feeds were not originally created for Twitter and are absent some of the cultural practices and do not use coding tools to help make finding posts easier. Thus, tweets tagged with a # are fewer and more readily countable in search. This allows for comparisons to be made between teams over a short period. For the period between May 3 and May 8, 2010, #melbournestorm beat out all the other teams that were sampled for most the most discussed NRL team. (Table 2) There were twenty-one references for the team on May 5. This is sixteen more than #manlyseaeagles on the same date and the only other team with five or more tweets with a hashtag on a single day. The controversy can likely be seen as the cause for the increase in the number of tweets when compared to other teams in the league.

Table 2
Hashtagged Marked NRL Team Tweets
Team Keyword
3-May-10

4-May-10

5-May-10

6-May-10

7-May-10

8-May-10
Brisbane Broncos #brisbanebroncos
0

0

0

0

0

1
Canberra Raiders #canberraraiders
0

0

0

0

0

1
Gold Coast Titans #GCtitans
0

0

0

1

0

0
Gold Coast Titans #goldcoasttitans
0

0

0

1

0

0
Manly Sea Eagles #manlyseaeagles
0

0

5

0

0

0
Melbourne Storm #melbournestorm
0

2

21

2

3

1
Newcastle Knights #NewcastleKnights
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NQCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NQldCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NorthQldCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NorthQueenslandCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
Parramatta Eels #ParramattaEels
0

0

0

0

0

0
Penrith Panthers #PenrithPanthers
0

0

0

0

0

0
Sydney Roosters #SydneyRoosters
1

0

0

0

0

0
Wests Tigers #WestsTigers
0

0

0

0

1

0



Facebook

Facebook is one of the largest social networks in Australia and it arguably has the largest population of Melbourne Storm fans online. Outside of interest monitoring, the easiest way to monitor the activities of fans is to examine the fan community’s growth on official pages and groups, and activity levels on these groups.

The Melbourne Storm has an official user profile on Facebook. The profile is for their mascot, Storm Man. It has a limited profile view so only people who have friended the account can view posts and interact with content posted by Storm Man. When the profile was checked on April 6, 2010, the account had 3,203 friends. Checked again on April 28, the account had 4,154. On May 9, the account had 4,401 friends and on May 10, it had 4,494 friends. While the total new friends for their account was fewer than other clubs such as the Brisbane Lions over the same period (Table 3), the team had the largest percentage increase in: 28.7% versus 13.5% for the next closest team, the North Queensland Cowboys. The controversy did not cost the team any friends and resulted in a higher percentage gain when compared to other teams. It has resulted in a net momentum gain that continues almost three weeks after the controversy first broke out.

Table 3
Facebook Fan Counts by Club and Date
Official Facebook account
6-Apr-10

10-May-10

Difference

% increase
Melbourne Storm
3,203

4,494

1,291

28.7%
North Queensland Cowboys
2,428

2,806

378

13.5%
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles
14,895

17,044

2,149

12.6%
Wests Tigers
14,078

15,911

1,833

11.5%
Gold Coast Titans
18,032

20,204

2,172

10.8%
Sydney Roosters
12,204

13,570

1,366

10.1%
Newcastle Knights
12,766

13,774

1,008

7.3%
Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks
9,502

10,229

727

7.1%
Canberra Raiders
2,583

2,775

192

6.9%
Brisbane Lions
45,327

48,228

2,901

6.0%


Facebook Fan Pages are created by teams and by fans. The person who created the Fan Page can post to the wall, control else who can post to the wall, control the type of content posted to the Fan Page and create a unique landing page. Members of a Fan Page can comment on wall posts and indicate they like the post. There are many Melbourne Storm fans that have created Fan Pages and many more have joined, commented and liked posts made to these Fan Pages. A quick search on Facebook for Fan Pages dedicated to the team using the keywords “Melbourne Storm” results in over 500 pages about the team. By looking at a sample of the individual Fan Pages to check the daily posting volume of wall posts and the number of likes and comments to those posts, an idea of how the controversy effected fan interests can be determined.

For this, three Fan Pages were chosen. These were the top three Fan Pages in search that were not created in response to the controversy. They are Melbourne Storm, Best team in NRL.. Melbourne Storm ! and melbourne storm :) . The total posts per day by the person who runs the Fan Page, and comments and likes per post associated with the post for the day were recorded for the period between April 1 and May 10, 2010. (Table 4) When comparing the total posts in the period between April 1 and April 22, 2010 to the period between April 23 to May 10, two of the three Fan Pages had more posts made by the maintainers before the controversy. (Graph 1) Two of the three groups saw an increase in the total comments made after the controversy. For Melbourne Storm, a Fan Page with over 40,000 members, the increase was massive going from 54 comments to 803 comments. The increase for Best team in NRL.. Melbourne Storm !, a group with 281 members as of May 10, was much smaller. It went from 252 to 257 comments. For all three groups, there was an increase in the number of likes after the controversy took place. While posting levels by Fan Page maintainers may not have increased, the level of engagement and interest in the team for the fan population did. The controversy has created a climate where fans are more engaged with posts.




Mailing lists

During much of the 1990s, mailing lists were one of the most popular tools for fans to use in order to communicate with each other. The creation of mailing lists became much easier when sites like egroups, coollists, topica, Yahoo!Groups and Google groups were created. They largely automated the process of creating mailing lists, provided web based archives and removed barriers of having to understand majordomo syntax in order to join a list.

Australian sports fans actively used these services to participate in their team’s fandom. Some leagues and teams were more popular than other leagues and teams. Amongst the fan communities utilizing mailing lists were Melbourne Storm fans. Most of the lists dedicated to team were on Yahoo!Groups, where there are currently eight lists. These eight lists include melbournestorm2, melbournestormrugbyleague, melbournestormsupportersclub, Storm_Squad, StormSupporters, MSSC-Storm-Mailouts and melbourne_storm_supporters. Many of these lists are no longer active. There are a variety of reasons for this including absent list owners, large volumes of spam content posted on list, people switching to different services in order to express their fondness for the team or fans losing interest in a team. If spam content is not counted in total posting volume by month, the peak posting month was February 2001 with 59 total posts across all eight lists. January 2001 had the next highest posting volume by month with 50 posts. Given the always small and inactive community, it is not surprising that there have been zero posts on these lists since the controversy broke out. These lists have also seen zero growth in membership since their totals were last checked on February 20, 2010. The controversy had no effect on the Storm’s mailing list community.


43things

According to Robot Co-op (2010), 43things “is the world’s largest goal-setting community.” Members of the site set goals for themselves that are published on their profiles and on lists of others who share the same goal. Members are also encouraged to blog about their efforts in trying to complete their goals. Other members are encouraged to cheer people on as they work to complete a goal. When a goal has been completed, people change the goal status to “I did this” and it appears as completed on their profile. This site is relatively popular; according to Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010), the site is ranked the 2,549th most popular website in Australia.

There are a number of people who have set Australia related sports goals on 43thing. This includes playing for certain clubs to attending the finals to seeing the team they barrack for play. On April 1, 2010, the site was searched for any goals that connected to the Melbourne Storm. Only one goal related to the Melbourne Storm was found. It is “Go to a Melbourne Storm Game.” Two people, erynne and mmcpharlane, had listed this as a goal they were working towards completing. When checked again on May 10, no one had added any additional goals related to the Melbourne Storm. No movement had been made towards completing the existing goal: Both individuals still listed themselves as working towards it and neither had updated their blog to indicate they were any closer to accomplishing this goal. The controversy has not had any measurable impact on people’s goal setting and efforts towards accomplishing their goals as they pertain to the Melbourne Storm.


Conclusion

The controversy involving the Melbourne Storm’s salary cap violations and the subsequent punishment of rewarding them zero points for the season has not resulted in a loss of people interested in the team or resulted in a drop in activity level on the part of fans. Across smaller and less popular services and web sites, there has been no behavior change; the controversy has had a null effect in that no one removed content or interests, nor created content and added interests. For larger sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, there has been a gain in followers, viewers and interactions. Eighteen days out from the initial incident, a long tail increase in views and interactions exists when compared to the period prior to the controversy. While some of the initial burst of activity and interest could be a consequence of negativity publicity, the long tail interest two to three weeks out is much harder to attribute to solely to wanting to watch a controversy for the sake of entertainment. If interest continue to stay elevated, the club should be able to leverage to increase club membership and sponsorship deals, especially as they apply to their online presence, because they have successfully used the controversy to grow their fanbase. The behaviors of fans demonstrate that have been incentized to express their loyalty and solidarity with the team.

References

Albanesius, C. (2010, April 19). Facebook makes ‘connections,’ adds community pages. PC Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362825,00.asp

Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, May 10). 43things.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/43things.com

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 49377 times in 201004 . Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/en/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 276 times in 201004. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/fr/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 276 times in 201004. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/it/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 5561 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/en/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 91 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/fr/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 19 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/it/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Melbourne storm stripped of two premierships for salary cap breach. (2010, April 22). Fox Sports, Retrieved from http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,27022196-5018866,00.html

Robot Co-op. (2010, May 10). List your goals on 43 things. Retrieved from http://www.43things.com/

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Popularity of Australian sports leagues across various social networks

Posted by Laura on Saturday, 13 March, 2010

I’ve been checking the number of people who list a team as an interest across a number of social networks.  Yesterday, for networks where I had information on 215 teams I have on my list, I added together the number of people who listed a team as an interest in various leagues.  I got the following table.

League Total DW DJ JF IJ Blurty Inksome CrazyLife LiveJournal Blogger Facebook Twitter Gaia Online
AFL 266883 7 3 4 13 7 1 5 613 168 239480 26582 1
AFL Canberra 2 1 1
A-League 73559 90 44 69060 4363 2
ANZ Championship 2200 5 860 1335
Australia Athletics 83 83
Basketball Australia 326 326
Brisbane Netball Association 21 21
Claxton Shield 1615 1580 35
Commonwealth Bank Trophy 3 2 1
First class cricket 34573 1 1 3 29 22400 12140
Gridiron Australia Nationals 66 66
NBL 7899 1 1 1 30 5 4220 3641
Netball Australia 1651 1580 71
Netball New South Wales 22 22
NRL 180242 7 7 2 8 411 78 167585 12138 6
NSW Premier League 316 1 4 311
Plenty Valley Netball Association 20 20
Rugby League/State of Origin 61519 1 1 18 61320 179
Super 14 49838 1 1 1 85 5 37460 12284 1
VFL 208 3 1 204
Victorian Amateur Football Association 1 1
WNBL 38 9 29
Women’s Flat Track Derby Association 760 760

Interesting to see what networks have what populations.  The WNBL is only really an interest on 2 networks while the AFL is present on every network.  These networks all have different population sizes so total numbers is really apple to oranges in some ways.  I then decided to rank the leagues by how popular they were on each network.  The most popular league ranks 1, the next most popular league ranks 2.  If there is a tie, they share the same rank.  The results of that are in the following table:

League Blogger Blurty Crazy
Life
Dreamwidth Dead
Journal
Facebook Gaia Online Inksome Insane
Journal
Journal
Fen
Inksome Live
Journal
Twitter Average
rank
Total people
AFL 1 2 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.30 266884
NRL 2 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 4 1.77 180242
First class cricket 3 2 6 1 1 6 3 3.14 34574
A-League 3 3 2 3 5 3.2 73559
Super 14 4 3 3 3 5 3 4 2 3.37 49838
NBL 4 3 3 3 7 5 6 4.42 7899
Rugby League/State of Origin 3 4 2 7 11 5.4 61519
NSW Premier League 3 10 9 7.33 316
AFL Canberra 2 13 7.5 2
Basketball Australia 8 8 326
ANZ Championship 10 9 7 8.66 2200
Commonwealth Bank Trophy 6 12 9 3
VFL 6 11 10 9 208
Netball Australia 8 13 10.5 1651
Women’s Flat Track Derby Association 11 11 760
WNBL 8 16 12 38
Claxton Shield 9 15 12 1615
Australia Athletics 12 12 83
Victorian Amateur Football Association 13 13 1
Gridiron Australia Nationals 14 14 66
Netball New South Wales 17 17 22
Brisbane Netball Association 18 18 21
Plenty Valley Netball Association 19 19 20

This table is a bit more interesting.  Across most networks, the AFL is the most popular league.  The NRL is the second most popular league.  First class cricket, compromising state cricket teams, is the third most popular.  The A-League and Super 14 are close behind.  When you get down near the bottom, patterns become interesting.  The WNBL is not as popular as Women’s Flat Track Derby Association.  This is largely a result of the large number of fans on Facebook.  AFL Canberra is also more popular than the VFL.  This is because of the high rank on JournalFen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues lists the attendance by league for six Australian sports leagues in 2009.  I cannot find a better list of attendance data for Australian sports league, especially the minor leagues.  That makes the rest of this analysis a bit problematic but moving forward anyway… This data is then put into the following table:

League Average rank Total people Total attendance 2009 Average attendance 2009
AFL 1.30 266884 6370350 36195
NRL 1.77 180242 3084481 16065
Super 14 3.2 49838 2021376 21504
A-League 3.37 73559 1166966 12966
NBL 3.14 7899 644976 3665
First class cricket 4.42 34574 308590 18153

For total number of people attending during the course of a season, it certainly seems to track with the average league rank on the social networks in this sample.  Total people and total attendance seems to track some too.  I ran the correlation to confirm these observations:

Total attendance 2009 Average attendance 2009
Average rank -0.892632665 -0.511836009
Total people 0.949552518 0.769754845

Total attendance does correlate meaningfully.  Average attendance isn’t as meaningful but the correlation is still relatively strong.  There is a relationship there.

I’ve found that similar relationships exist with American baseball teams.  The issue of course is: Cause and effect.  Does high fan attendance lead to more fans listing their teams as an interest on social media? Or does becoming interested in a team on social media sites lead people to attending games?  It feels like the first but I have no evidence either way.

Related Posts:

Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers

Posted by Laura on Wednesday, 10 March, 2010

Yesterday, I made a post about the most popular Australian athlete, league and team related Twitter accounts.

On Twitter, @anthonyalsop pointed me to a list of Australian athletes on Twitter he had created.  I had missed quite a few on his list and some of those accounts led me to lists where I found additional athletes, teams and leagues.  All told, I added about 61 new rows of data.  There are a few repeats from yesterday’s list as I updated some numbers.  (Historical twitter growth for athletes would be interesting to look at and there are tools for just that.  It is a project for a different day. Maybe.)  There doesn’t appear to be much change.

Things to remember with this list: It does not include athletes who do not play for team based sports.  Swimmers, golfers, tennis players, surfers and race car drivers are not on the list.  It also does not include Australian athletes playing for teams outside of Australia.  This includes cyclists (who are probably the most popular Australian athletes that I can find) as they often compete for teams outside Australia.  It does not include Australian NBA and WNBA players.  It also does not include retired Australian athletes, unless they are now involved in a management role with a specific team.  National teams are included but players are generally sorted by their other playing affiliation. This list does include athletes and teams from outside Australia when the league has teams from other countries.  Thus, South Africa is represented with its Super 14 teams and New Zealand is included with a variety of teams in leagues such as the NRL, Super 14 and the NBL.

  • First class cricket : New South Wales Blues : PH408 (unofficial) -10,729 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Wests Tigers : LoteTuqiri (unofficial) -4,957 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Pretoria Bulls (Northern Bulls) : VictorMatfield (unofficial) -4,559 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : NRL : NRL -4,231 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : Collingwood_FC -3,980 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Essendon Bombers : Essendon_FC -3,808 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Adelaide Crows : Adelaide_FC -3,696 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Essendon Bombers : JobeWatson (unofficial) -3,523 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : Collingwood_FC -3,506 (30-Dec-09)
  • Super 14 : Natal Sharks : JohnSmit123 (unofficial) -3,412 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Wellington Hurricanes : Hurricanesrugby -3,395 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Sydney Swans : sydneyswans -3,160 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Essendon Bombers : AngusMonfries (unofficial) -3,052 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : jimstynes (unofficial) -3,004 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : harry_o (unofficial) -2,712 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : harry_o (unofficial) -2,703 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : St. Kilda Saints : stkildafc -2,617 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Wellington Hurricanes : neyza3 (unofficial) -2,446 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : mat_rogers6 (unofficial) -2,219 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : St. Kilda Saints : stkildafc -2,214 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Carlton Blues : Carlton_FC -1,932 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Geelong Cats : Geelong_FC (unofficial) -1,856 (30-Dec-09)
  • Super 14 : Canterbury Crusaders : mornesteyn (unofficial) -1,631 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : GCTitans -1,616 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) : nzwarriors (unofficial) -1,533 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : St. George Illawarra Dragons : RealBigDell (unofficial) -1,438 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : MVFCVIDEOS (unofficial) -1,432 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : North Queensland Cowboys : northqldcowboys -1,403 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Brisbane Broncos : BrisBroncosClub -1,365 (2-Jan-10)
  • AFL : Hawthorn Hawks : Hawks_AFL (unofficial) -1,336 (9-Mar-10)
  • First class cricket : New South Wales Blues : ClarkeVC (unofficial) -1,230 (10-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : nathan2jones (unofficial) -1,216 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : gomvfc -1,185 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Wests Tigers : Wests_Tigers (unofficial) -1,165 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Durban Sharks (Coastal Sharks)(Natal Sharks) : sharksrugby -1,159 (9-Mar-10)
  • National team : Socceroos : socceroos_news (unofficial) -1,099 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : jarryd_hayne (unofficial) -1,078 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Richmond Tigers : Richmond_FC -1,062 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : North Melbourne Kangaroos : northkangaroos -1,052 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : CamSchwab (unofficial) -961 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Port Adelaide Power : PAFC -946 (30-Dec-09)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : Adelaide36ers -908 (8-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Melbourne Vixens : MelbourneVixens -904 (12-Jan-10)
  • First class cricket : Victorian Bushrangers : Bushrangers -895 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Manly Sea Eagles : manlyseaeagles -888 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : PirtekParraEels (unofficial) -853 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : DemonsHQ -841 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : PeterDaicos (unofficial) -838 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Hawthorn Hawks : HawthornFC -823 (30-Dec-09)
  • NRL : Sydney Roosters : sydroosters (unofficial) -800 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : South Sydney Rabbitohs : SSFCRABBITOHS -761 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Wellington Hurricanes : Powza13 (unofficial) -719 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Canterbury Crusaders : crusadersrugby -717 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Brisbane Lions : ALFbrisbane (unofficial) -690 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Central Coast Mariners Football Club : LawrieMcKinna (unofficial) -681 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : West Coast Eagles : WCEofficial -671 (30-Dec-09)
  • NRL : Penrith Panthers : penrithpanthers (unofficial) -644 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : North Queensland Fury FC : nqfuryfc -627 (5-Jan-10)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : DemonsHQ -624 (30-Dec-09)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : parramatta_eels -618 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : South Sydney Rabbitohs : rabbitohs (unofficial) -617 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Melbourne Tigers : Follow24Hodge (unofficial) -612 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Melbourne Storm : MelbourneStorm_ (unofficial) -605 (8-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Queensland Reds : QuadeCooper (unofficial) -594 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Cape Town Stormers (Western Stormers) : THESTORMERS -593 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Wollongong Hawks : wollongonghawks -585 (10-Mar-10)
  • First class cricket : New South Wales Blues : NBRACKEN142 (unofficial) -577 (10-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Wollongong Hawks : wollongonghawks -572 (6-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Queensland Reds : Reds_Rugby -560 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : collingwoodnews (unofficial) -545 (8-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : New South Wales Waratahs : HSBCWaratahs -504 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : West Coast Eagles : wingsofperth (unofficial) -503 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : New Zealand Breakers : johnrillie (unofficial) -474 (6-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Queensland Reds : RedsRugby (unofficial) -460 (3-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Melbourne Storm : MelbStormRLC (unofficial) -458 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Perth Wildcats : perthwildcats -457 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : adrianleijer (unofficial) -454 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : South Sydney Rabbitohs : therabbitohs (unofficial) -448 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : mitchlangerak (unofficial) -445 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : St. Kilda Saints : njbrown17 (unofficial) -437 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : ACT Brumbies : BrumbiesRugby -436 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) : thenzwarriors -434 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : South Dragons : Joeingles7 (unofficial) -431 (6-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Fremantle Dockers : FremantleFC (unofficial) -427 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : North Melbourne Kangaroos : andrewswallow (unofficial) -417 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Central Coast Mariners Football Club : LawrieMcKinna -414 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : AshHarrison1 (unofficial) -410 (9-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Melbourne Vixens : SharelleVixens -400 (12-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : victoryinmelb -392 (5-Jan-10)
  • AFL : Fremantle Dockers : Freo_Dockers (unofficial) -388 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : bigdyman (unofficial) -376 (8-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Adelaide United : adelaideunited -376 (5-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Wellington Phoenix : wgtnphoenixfc -376 (5-Jan-10)
  • AFL : Gold Coast Football Club : GoldCoastFC -373 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Brisbane Lions : AFLbrisbanelion -363 (30-Dec-09)
  • National team : Socceroos : Socceroos -353 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : lukeodwyer (unofficial) -348 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Newcastle Jets : newcastle_jets -338 (5-Jan-10)
  • Super 14 : Natal Sharks : KeeganDaniel (unofficial) -333 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : St. George Illawarra Dragons : mighty_dragons (unofficial) -316 (9-Mar-10)
  • Basketball Australia : Australian Boomers : aussieboomers -307 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Brisbane Roar : BNERoar (unofficial) -300 (5-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Sydney FC : SFCNews (unofficial) -297 (5-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Brisbane Roar : BNERoar (unofficial) -296 (3-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : PlanetEels (unofficial) -293 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : West Coast Eagles : WestCoastEagles (unofficial) -291 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Melbourne Tigers : Wortho33 (unofficial) -285 (6-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Fremantle Dockers : Fremantle_FC -282 (30-Dec-09)
  • NBL : Wollongong Hawks : milisimic (unofficial) -272 (8-Mar-10)
  • First class cricket : Tassie Tigers : crickettas -271 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Brisbane Broncos : BrisbaneBronco (unofficial) -270 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks : SharksOnline (unofficial) -263 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : TsvCrocs -259 (6-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : TsvCrocs -259 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Perth Wildcats : nickmarvin (unofficial) -251 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Hawthorn Hawks : LanceFranklin (unofficial) -250 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : chomicide (unofficial) -237 (6-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Cairns Taipans : Dusty_Rychart (unofficial) -234 (8-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Adelaide United : adelaidereds -231 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : blueandgoldarmy (unofficial) -225 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : MelbourneFC (unofficial) -223 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Brisbane Roar : brisbaneroar -221 (3-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Wests Tigers : beauryan_winger (unofficial) -215 (9-Mar-10)
  • First class cricket : Queensland Bulls : andrew_symonds (unofficial) -215 (10-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Queensland Firebirds : laurafirebirds (unofficial) -213 (3-Jan-10)
  • NSW Premier League : Sydney Olympic : MarkBosnich (unofficial) -208 (9-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Adelaide Thunderbirds : NatTbirds -205 (12-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Canberra Raiders : RaidersCanberra -202 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : West Coast Eagles : MitchJbrown17 (unofficial) -198 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Perth Glory : PerthGlory_FC -190 (5-Jan-10)
  • First class cricket : New South Wales Blues : eddiecowan (unofficial) -183 (10-Mar-10)
  • NBL : New Zealand Breakers : oscarforman (unofficial) -177 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Sydney FC : SydneyFC0910 -174 (5-Jan-10)
  • Netball Victoria : Netball Victoria : netballvic -174 (12-Jan-10)
  • First class cricket : South Australian Redbacks (Southern Redbacks) : RedbacksT20 -173 (8-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : New South Wales Swifts : SusanSwifts -160 (12-Jan-10)
  • NBL : Perth Wildcats : TheRealSchensh (unofficial) -154 (6-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Perth Wildcats : TheRealSchensh (unofficial) -154 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : rustyhinder (unofficial) -153 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : victorytwit (unofficial) -144 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : 1eyedeel (unofficial) -143 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Essendon Bombers : essendonfc (unofficial) -143 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Melbourne Rebels : melbournerebels -141 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Gold Coast Football Club : GoldCoastFC -139 (30-Dec-09)
  • WNBL : WNBL : -138 (10-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Brisbane Broncos : broncosbigfan (unofficial) -137 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : ACT Brumbies : Hoilesy (unofficial) -133 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Brisbane Lions : AFLBrisbaneFC -126 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : South Sydney Rabbitohs : benross23 (unofficial) -124 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Western Australia Force (Western Force) : s14_force -118 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : jgovereasy (unofficial) -110 (6-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : jordiemck (unofficial) -102 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Central Cheetahs (Vodacom Cheetahs) : VodacomCheetahs -102 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Hawthorn Hawks : bmsew (unofficial) -100 (9-Mar-10)
  • VFL : Casey Scorpions : CaseyScorpions -100 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Sydney Swans : BionicSwan (unofficial) -99 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : North Melbourne Kangaroos : Marcus__White (unofficial) -99 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Queensland Reds : s14_queensland (unofficial) -99 (3-Jan-10)
  • First class cricket : Victorian Bushrangers : petersiddle (unofficial) -99 (10-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks : Fergo1990 (unofficial) -97 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Wests Tigers : fakebrycegibbs (unofficial) -93 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Gold Coast United : GCUSC -92 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Brisbane Broncos : broncobasher (unofficial) -91 (9-Mar-10)
  • Rugby League/State of Origin : Queensland Maroons : QLD_Maroons -91 (3-Jan-10)
  • ANZ Championship : New South Wales Swifts : nswswifts -90 (12-Jan-10)
  • VFL : North Ballarat Roosters : NB_Roosters -90 (9-Mar-10)
  • Rugby League/State of Origin : New South Wales Blues : NSWRL -88 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : DarrenNg8 (unofficial) -86 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : mvfcfanzone -84 (5-Jan-10)
  • NSW Premier League : Sydney United : addsie (unofficial) -83 (8-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Queensland Reds : ezytaylor (unofficial) -83 (9-Mar-10)
  • Australia Athletics : Australian Flames (national team) : australianflame -83 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Central Coast Mariners Football Club : CCMarinersFC (unofficial) -82 (5-Jan-10)
  • NBL : New Zealand Breakers : NZBreakers -79 (9-Mar-10)
  • First class cricket : Queensland Bulls : qldcricket -72 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : JoshJenkins24 (unofficial) -72 (6-Mar-10)
  • Netball Australia : Netball Australia : NetballAust -72 (12-Jan-10)
  • Netball Australia : Australian Diamonds (national team) : AussieDiamonds -71 (12-Jan-10)
  • ANZ Championship : West Coast Fever : SusanWCFever -66 (12-Jan-10)
  • Gridiron Australia Nationals : WA Raiders : fatloaf (unofficial) -65 (8-Mar-10)
  • Gridiron Australia Nationals : Perth Blitz : fatloaf (unofficial) -65 (8-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Adelaide Thunderbirds : AdelaideTBirds -62 (12-Jan-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : BenFitz (unofficial) -62 (6-Mar-10)
  • NRL : St. George Illawarra Dragons : jsaffy (unofficial) -60 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Western Bulldogs : ccaallward (unofficial) -57 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : 36ers (unofficial) -51 (6-Mar-10)
  • Semi Professional Basketball League : Semi Professional Basketball League : SEABL -50 (10-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Sydney FC : SydneyFC -44 (5-Jan-10)
  • NBL : South (Melbourne) Dragons : SAVEOURDRAGONS (unofficial) -44 (10-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Sydney Kings : sydneykings -43 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : VictoriaParkHC (unofficial) -42 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Balmain Tigers : tigers1908 (unofficial) -42 (9-Mar-10)
  • WNBL : Dandenong Jayco Rangers : jennaohea (unofficial) -42 (10-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Fremantle Dockers : ryanmcrowley (unofficial) -41 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : Aaron_Cannings (unofficial) -41 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Newcastle Knights : Corypato (unofficial) -41 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : matesOmelbourne (unofficial) -39 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Manly Sea Eagles : gorgeousgrose (unofficial) -39 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Richmond Tigers : yellow_n_black (unofficial) -38 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : Kegs42 (unofficial) -38 (6-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Essendon Bombers : bomberblitz (unofficial) -37 (9-Mar-10)
  • Claxton Shield : Barbagallo Perth Heat : PerthHeat -35 (3-Jan-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : willo43 (unofficial) -35 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Gold Coast Blaze : Vandy21 (unofficial) -33 (6-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Gold Coast Blaze : Vandy21 (unofficial) -33 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : demonwiki (unofficial) -33 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Wollongong Hawks : danjackson9 (unofficial) -32 (8-Mar-10)
  • Netball New South Wales : : Sydney_Netball -31 (12-Jan-10)
  • AFL : St. Kilda Saints : RWBFooty (unofficial) -26 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Fremantle Dockers : briansham (unofficial) -22 (9-Mar-10)
  • Netball New South Wales : Petersham RUFC Netball Club : PetershamNetbal -22 (12-Jan-10)
  • Brisbane Netball Association : ACE Netball Club : ACENetball -21 (12-Jan-10)
  • WNBL : Dandenong Jayco Rangers : JaycoRangers -21 (10-Mar-10)
  • Plenty Valley Netball Association : Orcas Netball : Orcas_Netball -20 (12-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : parraeels (unofficial) -19 (9-Mar-10)
  • Basketball Australia: Australian Opals: AustralianOpals – 19 (9-Mar-10)
  • NSW Premier League : Manly United : ManlyUnited -18 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : ToffCedar (unofficial) -17 (8-Mar-10)
  • VFL : Port Melbourne Borough : BoroughBoy (unofficial) -14 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : cameronwhiting (unofficial) -13 (6-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Fremantle Dockers : bc8977 (unofficial) -10 (9-Mar-10)
  • WNBL : Logan Thunder : loganthunder -8 (10-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : brad_393 (unofficial) -5 (8-Mar-10)
  • Gridiron Australia Nationals : Perth Blitz : perthblitz -1 (9-Mar-10)If there is anyone  I missed, or anything that really surprised you, let me know.
  • Updated this list on the 11th to include the Australian Opals thanks to a comment by @SportingSheilas.

    Related Posts:

    Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers

    Posted by Laura on Tuesday, 9 March, 2010

    An updated version of this list can be found at Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.

    This is sorted by total number of followers. If an account is tagged (unofficial), it indicates that it is not the official account; it belongs to management, a player or a fansite.  The list includes teams from most of the major sports leagues in Australia.  Teams that play in those leagues that are not from Australia have also been included.  Players were only counted as belonging to a team if they currently play for it.  (Some players that are on NRL player lists have gone to play in Europe.  They aren’t included.)  The date that the information was collected is also included as these numbers actively change over time.  If some one/team/organization is listed twice, it is because the data was collected on multiple dates.

  • First class cricket : New South Wales Blues : PH408 (unofficial) -10,729 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Wests Tigers : LoteTuqiri (unofficial) -4,957 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Pretoria Bulls (Northern Bulls) : VictorMatfield (unofficial) -4,559 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : NRL : NRL -4,231 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : Collingwood_FC -3,980 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Essendon Bombers : Essendon_FC -3,808 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Adelaide Crows : Adelaide_FC -3,696 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : Collingwood_FC -3,506 (30-Dec-09)
  • Super 14 : Natal Sharks : JohnSmit123 (unofficial) -3,412 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Wellington Hurricanes : Hurricanesrugby -3,395 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Sydney Swans : sydneyswans -3,160 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : harry_o (unofficial) -2,703 (8-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Wellington Hurricanes : neyza3 (unofficial) -2,446 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : mat_rogers6 (unofficial) -2,219 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : St. Kilda Saints : stkildafc -2,214 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Carlton Blues : Carlton_FC -1,932 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Geelong Cats : Geelong_FC -1,856 (30-Dec-09)
  • Super 14 : Canterbury Crusaders : mornesteyn (unofficial) -1,631 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : GCTitans -1,616 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : St. George Illawarra Dragons : RealBigDell (unofficial) -1,438 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : MVFCVIDEOS (unofficial) -1,432 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : North Queensland Cowboys : northqldcowboys -1,403 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Brisbane Broncos : BrisBroncosClub -1,365 (2-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : gomvfc -1,185 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Wests Tigers : Wests_Tigers (unofficial) -1,165 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Durban Sharks (Coastal Sharks)(Natal Sharks) : sharksrugby -1,159 (9-Mar-10)
  • National team : Socceroos : socceroos_news (unofficial) -1,099 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : jarryd_hayne (unofficial) -1,078 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Richmond Tigers : Richmond_FC -1,062 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : North Melbourne Kangaroos : northkangaroos -1,052 (30-Dec-09)
  • AFL : Port Adelaide Power : PAFC -946 (30-Dec-09)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : Adelaide36ers -908 (8-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Melbourne Vixens : MelbourneVixens -904 (12-Jan-10)
  • First class cricket : Victorian Bushrangers : Bushrangers -895 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Manly Sea Eagles : manlyseaeagles -888 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : PirtekParraEels (unofficial) -853 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : PeterDaicos (unofficial) -838 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Hawthorn Hawks : HawthornFC -823 (30-Dec-09)
  • NRL : Sydney Roosters : sydroosters (unofficial) -800 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : South Sydney Rabbitohs : SSFCRABBITOHS -761 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Wellington Hurricanes : Powza13 (unofficial) -719 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Canterbury Crusaders : crusadersrugby -717 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : West Coast Eagles : WCEofficial -671 (30-Dec-09)
  • NRL : Penrith Panthers : penrithpanthers (unofficial) -644 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : North Queensland Fury FC : nqfuryfc -627 (5-Jan-10)
  • AFL : Melbourne Demons : DemonsHQ -624 (30-Dec-09)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : parramatta_eels -618 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : South Sydney Rabbitohs : rabbitohs (unofficial) -617 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Melbourne Tigers : Follow24Hodge (unofficial) -612 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Melbourne Storm : MelbourneStorm_ (unofficial) -605 (8-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Queensland Reds : QuadeCooper (unofficial) -594 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Cape Town Stormers (Western Stormers) : THESTORMERS -593 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Wollongong Hawks : wollongonghawks -572 (6-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Queensland Reds : Reds_Rugby -560 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : collingwoodnews (unofficial) -545 (8-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : New South Wales Waratahs : HSBCWaratahs -504 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : New Zealand Breakers : johnrillie (unofficial) -474 (6-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Queensland Reds : RedsRugby (unofficial) -460 (3-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Melbourne Storm : MelbStormRLC (unofficial) -458 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Perth Wildcats : perthwildcats -457 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : adrianleijer (unofficial) -454 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : South Sydney Rabbitohs : therabbitohs (unofficial) -448 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : mitchlangerak (unofficial) -445 (8-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : ACT Brumbies : BrumbiesRugby -436 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) : thenzwarriors (unofficial) -434 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : South Dragons : Joeingles7 (unofficial) -431 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Central Coast Mariners Football Club : LawrieMcKinna -414 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : AshHarrison1 (unofficial) -410 (9-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Melbourne Vixens : SharelleVixens -400 (12-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : victoryinmelb -392 (5-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Adelaide United : adelaideunited -376 (5-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Wellington Phoenix : wgtnphoenixfc -376 (5-Jan-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : bigdyman (unofficial) -376 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Brisbane Lions : AFLbrisbanelion -363 (30-Dec-09)
  • National team : Socceroos : Socceroos -353 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : lukeodwyer (unofficial) -348 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Newcastle Jets : newcastle_jets -338 (5-Jan-10)
  • Super 14 : Natal Sharks : KeeganDaniel (unofficial) -333 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : St. George Illawarra Dragons : mighty_dragons (unofficial) -316 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Brisbane Roar : BNERoar (unofficial) -300 (5-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Sydney FC : SFCNews (unofficial) -297 (5-Jan-10)
  • A-League : Brisbane Roar : BNERoar (unofficial) -296 (3-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : PlanetEels (unofficial) -293 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Melbourne Tigers : Wortho33 (unofficial) -285 (6-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Fremantle Dockers : Fremantle_FC -282 (30-Dec-09)
  • NBL : Wollongong Hawks : milisimic (unofficial) -272 (8-Mar-10)
  • First class cricket : Tassie Tigers : crickettas -271 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks : SharksOnline (unofficial) -263 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : TsvCrocs -259 (6-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : TsvCrocs -259 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Perth Wildcats : nickmarvin (unofficial) -251 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : chomicide (unofficial) -237 (6-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Cairns Taipans : Dusty_Rychart (unofficial) -234 (8-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Adelaide United : adelaidereds -231 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : blueandgoldarmy (unofficial) -225 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Brisbane Roar : brisbaneroar -221 (3-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Wests Tigers : beauryan_winger (unofficial) -215 (9-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Queensland Firebirds : laurafirebirds (unofficial) -213 (3-Jan-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Adelaide Thunderbirds : NatTbirds -205 (12-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Canberra Raiders : RaidersCanberra -202 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Perth Glory : PerthGlory_FC -190 (5-Jan-10)
  • NBL : New Zealand Breakers : oscarforman (unofficial) -177 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Sydney FC : SydneyFC0910 -174 (5-Jan-10)
  • Netball Victoria : Netball Victoria : netballvic -174 (12-Jan-10)
  • First class cricket : South Australian Redbacks (Southern Redbacks) : RedbacksT20 -173 (8-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : New South Wales Swifts : SusanSwifts -160 (12-Jan-10)
  • NBL : Perth Wildcats : TheRealSchensh (unofficial) -154 (6-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Perth Wildcats : TheRealSchensh (unofficial) -154 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : rustyhinder (unofficial) -153 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : victorytwit (unofficial) -144 (5-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : 1eyedeel (unofficial) -143 (9-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Gold Coast Football Club : GoldCoastFC -139 (30-Dec-09)
  • NRL : Brisbane Broncos : broncosbigfan (unofficial) -137 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : jgovereasy (unofficial) -110 (6-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Central Cheetahs (Vodacom Cheetahs) : VodacomCheetahs -102 (9-Mar-10)
  • Super 14 : Queensland Reds : s14_queensland (unofficial) -99 (3-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks : Fergo1990 (unofficial) -97 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Wests Tigers : fakebrycegibbs (unofficial) -93 (9-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Gold Coast United : GCUSC -92 (5-Jan-10)
  • Rugby League/State of Origin : Queensland Maroons : QLD_Maroons -91 (3-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Brisbane Broncos : broncobasher (unofficial) -91 (9-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : New South Wales Swifts : nswswifts -90 (12-Jan-10)
  • Rugby League/State of Origin : New South Wales Blues : NSWRL -88 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : DarrenNg8 (unofficial) -86 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Melbourne Victory : mvfcfanzone -84 (5-Jan-10)
  • NSW Premier League : Sydney United : addsie (unofficial) -83 (8-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Central Coast Mariners Football Club : CCMarinersFC (unofficial) -82 (5-Jan-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : JoshJenkins24 (unofficial) -72 (6-Mar-10)
  • Netball Australia : Netball Australia : NetballAust -72 (12-Jan-10)
  • First class cricket : Queensland Bulls : qldcricket -72 (8-Mar-10)
  • Netball Australia : Australian Diamonds (national team) : AussieDiamonds -71 (12-Jan-10)
  • ANZ Championship : West Coast Fever : SusanWCFever -66 (12-Jan-10)
  • Gridiron Australia Nationals : WA Raiders : fatloaf (unofficial) -65 (8-Mar-10)
  • Gridiron Australia Nationals : Perth Blitz : fatloaf (unofficial) -65 (8-Mar-10)
  • ANZ Championship : Adelaide Thunderbirds : AdelaideTBirds -62 (12-Jan-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : BenFitz (unofficial) -62 (6-Mar-10)
  • NRL : St. George Illawarra Dragons : jsaffy (unofficial) -60 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : 36ers (unofficial) -51 (6-Mar-10)
  • A-League : Sydney FC : SydneyFC -44 (5-Jan-10)
  • NBL : Sydney Kings : sydneykings -43 (8-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Collingwood Magpies : VictoriaParkHC (unofficial) -42 (8-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Balmain Tigers : tigers1908 (unofficial) -42 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Newcastle Knights : Corypato (unofficial) -41 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Gold Coast Titans : Aaron_Cannings (unofficial) -41 (9-Mar-10)
  • NRL : Manly Sea Eagles : gorgeousgrose (unofficial) -39 (9-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : Kegs42 (unofficial) -38 (6-Mar-10)
  • AFL : Richmond Tigers : yellow_n_black (unofficial) -38 (8-Mar-10)
  • Claxton Shield : Barbagallo Perth Heat : PerthHeat -35 (3-Jan-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : willo43 (unofficial) -35 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Gold Coast Blaze : Vandy21 (unofficial) -33 (6-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Gold Coast Blaze : Vandy21 (unofficial) -33 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Wollongong Hawks : danjackson9 (unofficial) -32 (8-Mar-10)
  • Netball New South Wales : : Sydney_Netball -31 (12-Jan-10)
  • Netball New South Wales : Petersham RUFC Netball Club : PetershamNetbal -22 (12-Jan-10)
  • Brisbane Netball Association : ACE Netball Club : ACENetball -21 (12-Jan-10)
  • Plenty Valley Netball Association : Orcas Netball : Orcas_Netball -20 (12-Jan-10)
  • NRL : Parramatta Eels : parraeels (unofficial) -19 (9-Mar-10)
  • NSW Premier League : Manly United : ManlyUnited -18 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : ToffCedar (unofficial) -17 (8-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Townsville Crocodiles : cameronwhiting (unofficial) -13 (6-Mar-10)
  • NBL : Adelaide 36ers : brad_393 (unofficial) -5 (8-Mar-10)
  • NWBL : Wenty Leagues WheelKings : -0 (6-Mar-10)
  • Victorian Amateur Football Association : University Blues : -0 (6-Mar-10)
  • Related Posts:

    Gridiron Australia community size

    Posted by Laura on Monday, 8 March, 2010

    I’m still working on completing my various social media totals. Today, I was poking around Twitter and I’m still surprised at the number of teams that don’t have a presence. One league I looked at was Gridiron Australia.  It isn’t a major league but it involves an American sport and it peaked my curiosity.  Unsurprisingly, the size of the community on social media sites is tiny.

    Interest WA Raiders SA Fire Queensland Sundevils Victorian Eagles ACT Monarchs NSW Wolfpack
    Dreamwidth Studios 0 0 0 0 0 0
    DeadJournal 0 0 0 0 0 0
    JournalFen 0 0 0 0 0 0
    InsaneJournal 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Blurty 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Inksome 0 0 0 0 0 0
    CrazyLife 0 0 0 0 0 0
    scribbld 0 0 0 0 0 0
    LiveJournal 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Blogger 0 0 0 0 0 0
    bebo 0 2 1 1 0 0
    Facebook 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Yahoo!Groups 61 0 0 0 0 0
    Twitter 65 0 0 0 0 0
    BlackPlanet 0 0 0 0 0 0
    orkut 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Total 126 2 1 1 0 0

    No teams have an official Twitter presence.  The extent to which a team is on Twitter involves a player being there and Tweeting about the team.   The player is @fatloaf.  He plays for the WA Raiders.  There other largest place to find the league is on Yahoo!Groups, where there are two lists dedicated to the WA Raiders:  waraiders and raidersd.  Outside of these scattered networks, there are a few fans on bebo.  It seems likely there are probably a few other fans dedicated to the league and these teams.  If they are, they are probably on more Australian specific networks or communities dedicated to the sport.

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    NBL on Twitter

    Posted by Laura on Monday, 8 March, 2010

    I have spent about three hours looking through various lists to find official NBL twitter accounts, NBL fansites, and accounts for NBL management and players.  NBL lists on Twitter are a bit different than comparable lists for say the A-League and even the Claxton Shield.  They contain a lot more fans of a team, players that used to play in the NBL  (but have gone to Europe or the US), sports management students, and journalists.  It looks like if you mention the NBL, some people will add you to the list.   To make sure I found actual player accounts on those lists, I compared names on accounts to the NBL player list and the Wikipedia player list.

    I recorded if it was the official team account, or an unofficial account.  Unofficial accounts are player, management or fansite accounts.  I also recorded the number of followers an account had.  Who are the most popular players on Twitter?  What are the most popular teams?

    Team Account Date collected Total followers
    Adelaide 36ers Adelaide36ers 8-Mar-10 908
    Melbourne Tigers Follow24Hodge (unofficial) 8-Mar-10 612
    Wollongong Hawks wollongonghawks 6-Mar-10 572
    New Zealand Breakers johnrillie (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 474
    Perth Wildcats perthwildcats 6-Mar-10 457
    South Dragons Joeingles7 (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 431
    Melbourne Tigers Wortho33 (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 285
    Wollongong Hawks milisimic (unofficial) 8-Mar-10 272
    Townsville Crocodiles TsvCrocs 6-Mar-10 259
    Perth Wildcats nickmarvin (unofficial) 8-Mar-10 251
    Townsville Crocodiles chomicide (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 237
    Cairns Taipans Dusty_Rychart (unofficial) 8-Mar-10 234
    New Zealand Breakers oscarforman (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 177
    Perth Wildcats TheRealSchensh (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 154
    Townsville Crocodiles rustyhinder (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 153
    Adelaide 36ers jgovereasy (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 110
    Adelaide 36ers DarrenNg8 (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 86
    Townsville Crocodiles JoshJenkins24 (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 72
    Adelaide 36ers BenFitz (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 62
    Adelaide 36ers 36ers (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 51
    Sydney Kings sydneykings 8-Mar-10 43
    Townsville Crocodiles Kegs42 (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 38
    Townsville Crocodiles willo43 (unofficial) 8-Mar-10 35
    Gold Coast Blaze Vandy21 (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 33
    Wollongong Hawks danjackson9 (unofficial) 8-Mar-10 32
    Townsville Crocodiles ToffCedar (unofficial) 8-Mar-10 17
    Townsville Crocodiles cameronwhiting (unofficial) 6-Mar-10 13
    Adelaide 36ers brad_393 (unofficial) 8-Mar-10 5

    One thing that surprised me was that not every team had an official account.  It seems like they should have one, if only to squat on it to protect their future potential assets.

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    NBL vs. A-League on Twitter

    Posted by Laura on Saturday, 6 March, 2010

    I’m not doing much of an analysis here as I’m still gathering data.  One difference between these two leagues that I see right off the bat is the type of presence.  For the A-League, there are a number of accounts created by fans dedicated to teams.  There are a few player and coach accounts for the A-League but not many.  The fan based accounts are just bigger, have more followers and appear more important to the fandom.

    In comparison, the NBL appears to have a large number of players on Twitter.  In some cases, the players appear to be at have decided to have staked out their own user name, if only to have it.  Some engage but many don’t have images.  A few have their tweets protected.  Most don’t have branded backgrounds or even list that they are playing in the NBL.

    That’s a big difference.  Is this a result of league policy regarding the use of social media?  Or is it a difference in sports culture, where NBL basketball players are say modeling NBA players and A-League players are emulating their European and America peers who appear to be less active on social networks?

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    Australian Hockey League on everything

    Posted by Laura on Thursday, 11 February, 2010

    This is mostly a follow up to Australian Hockey League on blogger, LiveJournal, and LiveJournal clones and Another problem team is problem: Tasmanian Tigers.  I finished looking at the other networks that I’ve been looking at so far: Bebo, Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo!Groups.  Given the size of this league and some of the name issues (two teams sharing names with other, bigger teams), I wasn’t surprised that the size was so tiny on these networks.  There isn’t enough data to provide any sort of meaningful analysis so I’m just providing a table of the size of the communities on the aforementioned networks based on the methodology discussed in other posts.

    Australian Hockey League

    Interest Canberra Labor Club Lakers New South Wales Waratahs NT Stingers Queensland Blades Southern Hotshots Tassie Tigers Victoria Vikings WA Thundersticks
    Dreamwidth 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    DeadJournal 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    JournalFen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    InsaneJournal 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Blurty 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Inksome 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    CrazyLife 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    scribbld 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    LiveJournal 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Blogger 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    bebo 0 2 1 0 0 1 0 0
    Facebook 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Yahoo!Groups 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Twitter 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    Total 0 2 1 0 0 1 0 0

    The AHL has zero presence that I can find on Twitter, which is a bit surprising.  No one appears to even be reporting on them.  They also appear to not have a presence on Facebook.  Developing these two would probably help increase their overall visibility.

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    Australian netball on Facebook and Twitter

    Posted by Laura on Tuesday, 12 January, 2010

    When I was compiling the list of Twitter accounts for the ANZ Championship, I found several Australian netball team Twitter related accounts, including ones for Australian Diamonds, Petersham RUFC Netball Club, ACE Netball Club, Orcas Netball.  I got details regarding the total number of followers, checked totals on Facebook and compared these to the ANZ teams.  The following table was generated:

    Australian Netball on Facebook and Twitter

    State League Team Total Facebook Twitter
    Victoria ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens 1,764 860 904
    Australia Netball Australia Australian Diamonds (national team) 1,651 1,580 71
    Queensland ANZ Championship Queensland Firebirds 213 0 213
    New South Wales ANZ Championship New South Wales Swifts 90 0 90
    Western Australia ANZ Championship West Coast Fever 66 0 66
    South Australia ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds 62 0 62
    New South Wales Netball New South Wales Petersham RUFC Netball Club 22 0 22
    Queensland Brisbane Netball Association ACE Netball Club 21 0 21
    Victoria Plenty Valley Netball Association Orcas Netball 20 0 20
    New Zealand ANZ Championship Canterbury Tactix 0 0 0
    New Zealand ANZ Championship Central Pulse 0 0 0
    New Zealand ANZ Championship Northern Mystics 0 0 0
    New Zealand ANZ Championship Southern Steel 0 0 0
    New Zealand ANZ Championship Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic 0 0 0

    For the smaller club teams that are more about participation, there just is not a Facebook interest in them.  This is not surprising as listing a team you participate in recreationally might seem odd; you’re not a fan but a player and the team isn’t professional or top level so it is unlikely others will want to find you as a result of your participation.  At least two of those teams have a Facebook presence to share news but this is not enough to get people to list these teams as an interest.

    Beyond the clubs listed, there are some regional accounts for those interested in Australian netball.  They include @NetballAust – Netball Australia (72 followers), @Sydney_Netball – Sydney and New South Wales netball news from a newspaper (31 followers), and @netballvic – Netball Victoria (20 followers).

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    ANZ Championship on Twitter

    Posted by Laura on Tuesday, 12 January, 2010

    I’ve spent the past two hours or so culling through various netball related Twitter lists, checking lists that included ANZ Championship teams and players.  After having done that, it looks like five teams have a Twitter presence:  Adelaide Thunderbirds, Melbourne Vixens, New South Wales Swifts, Queensland Firebirds, and West Coast Fever.  For the Thunderbirds, there are two accounts: @AdelaideTBirds and @NatTbirds.  The first is a team account and the second is the personal account of a player.  The Vixens similarly have two accounts, one for the team and a player with a personal account: @MelbourneVixens and @SharelleVixens.  The same situation exists for the New South Wales Swifts: @nswswifts and @SusanSwifts.  For the Queensland Firebirds and West Coast Fever, single players have accounts but the teams do not appear to have an official Twitter presence: @laurafirebirds and @SusanWCFever.

    For the team accounts, the Thunderbirds have 62 followers, the Vixens have 904 followers and the Swifts have 90 followers.  This puts the average at 352 followers per team because the 904 skews the numbers really high.  If that is excluded, the average is 76.  For player accounts, the average number of followers is 208.8.  The highest number is 400, for the Vixens player.  The lowest is 66 for the West Coast Fever player.  These numbers are comparable to several of the A-League related Twitter accounts.

    Using Twitter Analyzer, the location of the followers of these accounts was determined and the following table was generated:

    ANZ Championship on Twitter

      Thunderbirds Vixens Swifts Firebirds Fever
    Country Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter
    Australia 25 623 240 260 78
    Chile 0 0 0 0 3
    China 0 0 0 0 3
    Ecudador 0 9 0 0 0
    Germany 0 0 0 0 6
    Greenland 0 9 0 0 0
    India 0 9 0 0 0
    Israel 0 9 0 0 0
    New Zealand 2 0 5 0 6
    Thailand 0 0 0 0 0
    United Kingdom 5 18 15 25 15
    United States 6 135 75 65 42
    Total 38 812 335 350 153
    % Australia 65.80% 76.70% 71.60% 74.30% 51.00%
    % Chile 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2.00%
    % China 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2.00%
    % Ecudador 0.00% 1.10% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
    % Germany 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 3.90%
    % Greenland 0.00% 1.10% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
    % India 0.00% 1.10% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
    % Israel 0.00% 1.10% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
    % New Zealand 5.30% 0.00% 1.50% 0.00% 3.90%
    % Thailand 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
    % United Kingdom 13.20% 2.20% 4.50% 7.10% 9.80%
    % United States 15.80% 16.60% 22.40% 18.60% 27.50%

    The West Coast Fever (represented by their Tweeting player) had the smallest Australian audience and the Melbourne Vixens had the largest percentage Australian audience.  I still believe these numbers are questionably reliable, that people are lying about their location of that there is a huge problem with spam followers on Twitter.  Why?  The Melbourne Vixens have 9 followers from Greenland.   Googling for Greenland and Netball doesn’t bring up any information about sport in the country.  Given that, it doesn’t make sense that the Vixens would have that huge of a following from the country.

    If you’re interested in following ANZ Championship teams and players on Twitter, I’ve created a Twitter list @ozziesport/anzchampionship.

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    The A-League on Twitter

    Posted by Laura on Tuesday, 5 January, 2010

    There are ten leagues in Australia and New Zealands’s soccer A-League.  All teams have either an official or unofficial Twitter account.  In some cases, there are multiple accounts dedicated to a team.  Below is a list of some of the accounts sorted by team:

    If you want to easily follow these accounts on Twitter, you can do so by following my ozziesport’s A-League list.    This list was compiled by looking at the A-League related lists on Twitter, finding where teams were listed.  It is an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible.
    These Twitter accounts have various levels of activity.  Many are interactive, where the accounts reply to people or retweet others.  The interacting with followers seems to be more noticeable on fan run accounts.
    The team with the most account dedicated to them is the Melbourne Victory, with five. Next is the Sydney FC with three.  After that, you have Adelaide United, Brisbane Roar and the Central Coast Mariners with two.  Last, you have Gold Coast United, New Castle Jets, North Queensland Fury FC, Perth Glory and the Wellington Phoenix with one account each.
    The following chart shows the number of follows for each account sorted by total number of followers.  These numbers date to January 5, 2010.

    When these numbers are correlated with the 2009-2010 average match attendance, a somewhat meaningful correlation of .405 is found.  This may suggest that interest in following the team on Twitter correlates to match attendance and that teams could and should focus on getting followers.  A much stronger correlation of .940 exists between the total number of Twitter accounts dedicated to the team and their attendance.  This appears to suggests that large attendance leads to an active and strong fan base for Australian soccer.

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    Claxton Shield on Twitter

    Posted by Laura on Tuesday, 5 January, 2010

    The Claxton Shield is the premiere competition in for baseball in Australia.  It is organized by the Australian Baseball Federation and includes the Perth Heat, Victoria Aces, New South Wales Patriots, Queensland Rams teams.  The competition is the one of the main things that has been consistent in the baseball community with two leagues having become defunct.

    Looking around, the Australian baseball community does not appear to have a stronghold on social networks like bebo,blogger or LiveJournal.  They do however have a small presence on Twitter: The extent of which is the account run by the Perth Heat.  The team has 35 followers.  Twitter Analyzer seems a bit off with their count for where followers come from for the team.  It says that the Heat have 36 American followers, 4 Dutch followers, 4 Irish followers, 12 followers from Ecuador and 32 followers from Australians.  Stats like those are why I have a huge problem with Twitter Analyzer but I’m not sure what tool does a better job at counting.  The Perth Heat do a fairly good job at updating regularly, providing scores, links to updated rosters and their social profiles elsewhere.  (They link to their Facebook fanpage, where they have 1,110 fans.)  The one thing they don’t do particularly well is interact.

    It seems like Twitter would be a great potential tool for Claxton Shield and its teams to market itself as Twitter ranks 12th in Australia according to Alexa.  Second tier sports should definitely contemplate using it, in combination with YouTube and Facebook, to promote themselves so they can reach a wider audience.  People can accidentally find their content through @ replies, retweets, related videos that can help develop more organic interest in them.  If Australia is ever going to get another league like ABL and IBLA and have it be successful, this sort of thing needs to be done.

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    Official Australian Football League Twitter accounts and follower population by country

    Posted by Laura on Tuesday, 5 January, 2010

    This post is a series of posts looking at the size of Australian sports leagues on LiveJournal, its clones and other social networks. Five earlier posts were Australian Football League on JournalFen , Australian Football League community on DeadJournal , National Rugby League on DeadJournal and JournalFenAustralian Football League on LiveJournal clones like Blurty, Dreamwidth Studios and InsaneJournal and Adelaide Crows community on LiveJournal, its clones and Blogger.

    There is a tool called Twitter Analyzer.  It allows you to get some data about your followers on Twitter.  It has some short comings, namely that it really only allows you to identify followers by country, rather than state.  When trying to figure out the population location inside Australia for a team, this is a bit of a problem.  Still, data is data and I ran every team’s official Twitter account through it and the results are… not what I consider particularly useful.  For me rather than highlight where an audience for a team is, this highlights the problem of Twitter follow spam.

    Before going into this, Australian Football League games are available outside Australia.  The AFL has a list of their international partners that air games and news from the league.  The easiest place to get games is the United States and the United Kingdom where ESPN may provide them with up to three matches a week.  Ireland’s national network doesn’t appear to get games, so much as they get match summaries but they do get some on ESPN.  Europe gets the games on Eurosport but they are limited to two matches a week.  The Middle East and North Africa get two live matches a week.  New Zealand gets one live match a week on Sky, with additional coverage during sports related news casts.  Canada gets one game a week.  There is no indication that these games air live in Central and South America, Asia, and Oceania.  Airing of games in Africa is only very recent in a deal that appears to have taken place midway through the 2009 season. There clearly is an international market for the AFL and it is being fed.

    In the United States, the major site for info on Australian rules football, Australian Football Association of North America, gets only about 503 visitors a month.  For the official AFL site, Compete estimates the size of the United States visiting population at 6,736 for the past month.  This is relatively small population that we are talking about.  Alexa says that the official AFL site gets 2.6% of its traffic from countries other than Australia, Sri Lanka, the United States, the United Kingdom, China and India.  Alexa does not rank the official site in Ecuador, Germany, Thailand, or France.

    With that all in mind, time for Twitter data.  The team with the most followers it the Adelaide Crows with 3,696 follows.  The Essendon Bombers come in second with 3,808 followers.  The Collingwood Magpies are third at 3,506 followers and the Sydney Swans are fourth with 3,160 followers.  At the bottom are the Gold Coast Football Club with 139 followers.  The second smallest team in term of followers count is are the Fremantle Dockers with 282 followers.  Third is the Brisbane Lions with 363 followers.  All the other teams have follow counts above 500 and below 300.  Comparing the totals to the totals for LiveJournal clones, which is admittedly a bit small, something feels a bit out of whack but as I’m not Australian, not exposed to AFL coverage on a regular basis as part of my local news watching and reading, I’m not sure what.  The Essendon Bombers are number one for most followers on Twitter but rank 13th for total fans on LiveJournal clones.  The Collingwood Magpies rank 9th for population total on LJ clones and 3rd for followers on Twitter.  The Carlton Blues rank last for followers on LiveJournal clones but 6th on Twitter.  The Hawthorn Hawks rank 4th on LiveJournal clones and 11th on Twitter.  The Brisbane Lions rank 3rd on LiveJournal clones and 11th on Twitter.  The Fremantle Dockers rank 2nd on LiveJournal clones and 15 on Twitter.

    As I implied above, there is an international audience for the AFL but the size of it is some what limited.  Twitter Analyzer’s numbers don’t add up when comparing them to total followers so I’m not sure how accurate they really are. Overall, when total follower counts for all teams are added together, the total is 26,134 followers.  Based on Twitter Analyzer, 15,191 people do not list their country in their profiles.  That leaves us with 10,943 people who do list their country which would be fine but  9,059 are from Australia and 4,669 are from the United States which shouldn’t be possible.  Given that, I’m just going to compare the totals based on the data that Twitter Analyzer provides and ignore the total followers numbers from Twitter.

    Using these numbers, 59.6% of all followers of official AFL accounts are Australians.  Americans represent 30.7% of all followers.  Great Britain accounts for 3.3% of all followers.  Germany, Ecuador, and India all have percentages between 1.0 and 1.9%.   In addition to those numbers, 42 accounts from Greenland, 68 from Thailand, 18 from Vietnam and 31 from Argentina follow these official team Twitter accounts.

    I’m going to call highjinks here.  I know there is a US audience for the AFL.  We have our own domestic leagues, which attract a small audience mostly of die hard fans and people connected to the players.  The games are televised.  But I cannot believe that the Australian audience for teams on Twitter is only twice that of the US audience.  I’m also having a hard time believe that Ecuador and Argentina have a large following on Twitter.  I don’t believe that these numbers are a reliable indicator of international interest by country in these teams.  Evidence seems to indicate that two of the following are likely taking place: People are not listing the country they are actually from AND that these accounts have people following them with the intention of trying to get an autofollow back.  This data just is not reliable to determine the size of an team’s audience, or even the team’s effectiveness at using Twitter to reach their target audience.

    That said, the following is a country by country break down based on the numbers from Twitter Analyzer.

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