This week, the world of social media celebrated several interesting "holidays", from Cinco de Mayo to the unofficial Star Wars-tribute (May the 4th be with you, and also with you), and an homage to fashion at the Met Ball. Or in my opinion, a showcase of sheer depravity.
We looked at data around the NFL draft, caught up on the presidential election race that's getting more crowded by the week, and the start of high school and college graduation season.
This data is as hot as this unseasonable heat wave.
Two More Contenders enter 2016 Race
It's a reflection on the pace of life in 2015 that a presidential election that's a year and a half away is tracking so strongly on social media. With two more Republican candidates entering the race this week, Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee (deja vu), the conversation about all the candidates on Twitter has garnered over 383,000 mentions in the last week alone. That's a trifle compared to the over 3 million mentions in the last month.
Carly Fiorina is giving Hillary Clinton a run for her social money. Hillz has been an untouched social media darling (or scapegoat depending on the hashtag and your preferred camp), far surpassing all other candidates in terms of volume of mentions, for Republicans and Democrats alike. When Fiorina announced she was entering the race, her mentions spiked significantly on May 4th.
Hillary is back on top, but her mentions have taken a sharp decline in the last 24 hours.
In the conversation of the entire group of Dems and Reps running in 2016, the top 10 hashtags in the last seven days shows Hillary Clinton holding strong to dominating the conversation. It's not all smiles and rainbows, as two of the top 10 hashtags trending include #ohhillno and #whyimotvotingforhillary. Way harsh. Ted Cruz however is a mainstay as well when it comes to the presidential candidate hashtag elite.
Watching this race continues to be as riveting as the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight, or this past weekend's Kentucky Derby. Here's to the next 18 months of social drama!
Are You Ready for Some Draft Picks?
In the week around the draft (specifically April 28 through May 4), we analyzed over 2 million mentions of the NFL draft on Twitter. There were 5 times as many positive mentions as negative mentions, but what can you do, there is no way to make the world universally happy whenever it comes to any kind of competitive sport, let alone online social channels where people head to air their grievances.
Where were these Tweets coming from? I looked at our new Geotagged Maps that uses location-based Twitter data to reveal an incredibly accurate answer to the question of where.
While the conversation was heavily focused in mainland US, there are patches of conversation around the world about the draft from Australia to Hawaii and Brazil.
Zooming in to the United States, you can see the massive social media attention to the NFL Draft as well as the sentiment breakdown by region, thanks to the location-based Geotagging feature.
The gender split in the NFL Draft 2015 conversation was dominated by males, which is unsurprising in the traditional (re: sexist way) of thinking about sports. However, it is surprising as American football has been gaining major traction with female audiences of the past few years in the form of female fans and audience members, as well as sponsorships from heavily female-specific brands such as CoverGirl.
When it comes to the teams being talked about most, there definitely were a few that had a lot more mentions than the rest. The Chicago Bears, Browns, Patriots, Raiders, and Bengals came up more often than others organically in the most mentioned topics and phrases in the social media conversation about this year's draft.
But top hashtags painted a slightly different picture.
In the top ten hashtags in the NFL Draft 2015 conversation, the Packers, Steelers and Eagles made it into the most mentioned along with the Bears and Browns.
What I found incredibly entertaining is the celebrity and football-world responses to the NFL Draft picks:
Movin' on up to the real world
Graduation season for high school and college seniors is just getting underway, and in the last week alone there have been over 986,000 Tweets in reference to graduation.
Graduation is always a time of reflection and nostalgia, and social media is playing a key role in that mindset with some of the top 10 hashtags including #senioryearin5words #junioryearin5words and #collegein5words.
It's all about the memories.
The world's future leaders, parents, business professionals, and tech innovators are always highly concerned with the job market with both #job and #jobs making it into the top 10 hashtags in this conversation.
The most mentioned topics and phrases in the conversation reveal that graduates are excited to be done with their high school careers - "can't wait" being a top phrase used - and that "graduation gifts" are on the brain.
Emotionally (or rather emoticon-ally) speaking, the conversation about high school and college graduations online is a mixed bag of happy and sad, with so many emoticons on the feelings spectrum represented. From grins to the vague skeptical face, and evetything in between, the emotional aspect behind graduating from college or high school is posted significantly in the Twitter conversation.
The conversation from a gender perspective is heavily weighing toward females, as they hold 61% of the Twitter conversation about graduation.
In a look at the topics breakdown by gender, females are nearly exclusively discussing graduation caps and counting down the days until their release into the so-called "real world" while exclusively males are discussing Damian Lillard.
The NBA Portland Trail Blazers player, graduated from Weber State (keeping good on a promise to his mom) and also delivered a short speech at his actual graduation ceremony two days after his first round exit. According to a 2012 New York Times story only 21 percent of players in the NBA have an undergraduate degree, and now Lillard can count himself among that group.
Spring time data bonanza
After a seemingly never-ending cold season of stir-crazy cabin fever, New Yorkers and other northeast residents are Tweeting up a storm about all things amazing about warm weather months - festivals, holidays, and vacations. Stay tuned for more data!
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