Everyone was so caught up in the hijinks of Halloween that we forgot what follows, the month of November. This should officially be known as the month of change, and I'm not just referring to the weather (wonder when it'll stop being over 70 degrees here in New York City). Brands along with the general public haven't taken a moment's pause as thoughts and Tweets turn jolly with upcoming holiday season cheer.
And the real question now is: Too soon?
Red cup packaging is twice as nice as pumpkin spice
It has been little more than a month, so that means we were all due for a freakout over something Starbucks has done for us; you may remember the social celebration of Pumpkin Spice's return. The latest cause for the Starbucks fan army to lift its collective voice and celebrate? Starbucks' red cups.
These are not the red cups you came to know and love in college, oh no. Starbucks' red cups are a sign that the holidays are on their way.
Since Monday Starbucks' red cups have been mentioned over 113K times on Twitter.
The sentiment around the red cups is extremely positive. Within sentiment-categorized tweets, 92% are positive.
Most positive mentions are your typical, "OMG Starbucks' red cupz are back!!!" tweets. It is abundantly clear that Starbucks patrons love both the chain, and all its promotions.
Conversely, negative mentions center on stores that haven't yet started to serve the red cups. There is also a sizable portion of negative tweets that think the red cups have come out too early, and that Starbucks is trying to push the holiday season too soon.
A different element to this conversation is the hashtag, #RedCups. Starbucks paid for the Promoted Trend of #RedCups on Monday, and the hashtag has been used over 100K times on Twitter, accumulating more than 2 billion impressions.
The red cup emoji that accompanies the #RedCups hashtag has been seen every single time the emoji has been used, so you can associate the same amount of impressions to the emoji as well. In looking at Starbucks' signature Winter flavor, Peppermint Mocha, people are very stoked for its arrival as well. #PeppermintMocha was used more than 15K times and amassed more than 17 million impressions.
Twitter reveals its heart on its sleeve, and now posts
People never like change, or do they? This is the question Twitter is dealing with now that they have removed their star-shaped, favorite button in favor of a heart-shaped, like button.
The change has spawned more than 48K tweets with the hashtag #TwitterHeart from people weighing in on the new feature.
Apparently, people like the new, heart button as around 70% of sentiment-categorized tweets are positive.
The negative tweets are obviously against the change, but common themes among negative mentions discuss how this new "Like" heart makes Twitter more like Facebook, and how the heart icon typically represents love, not like.
The conversation is being led by women as women have contributed 62% of unique tweets. It appears that men are more polarized by the heart-shaped button as 40% of tweets from men are negative, this is opposed to 28% of tweets being negative from women.
Election Day, already?
Election Day - no not the big, big election day - was this past Tuesday and its corresponding hashtag, #ElectionDay, garnered over 101K mentions.
The hashtag was used equally across gender with men having a slim advantage in contribution at 52% of unique Twitter authors.
Obviously, this conversation was overwhelmingly American as the US held the majority share of tweets that included the hashtag at 92%.
Perhaps a better illustration of how actively the United States used the hashtag is below with the geotagged map.
Lastly, the two most popular tweets within this hashtag's conversation belong to presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson showing that they never miss an opportunity to get involved in relevant social discussions.
Fin wins: first nation with its own emoji set
This week Finland became the first nation to have its very own set of national emojis. A headbanger, a couple in a sauna and a Nokia 3310 (with a fourth emoji set to be released at a later date) are now the emoji representation of Finland.
Since the announcement of the Finnish emojis, the topic has received more than 5,600 mentions on Twitter.
The sentiment is completely positive (100%) within sentiment-categorized mentions. With this story catching the attention of the mainstream, international media, non-Finns are contributing to the conversation, Americans have tweeted the most about the emojis with 42% of discussion's contributions, Finland sits firmly in second place with 10% of all tweets.
If you're questioning the choice of Finland's emojis, perhaps you need to brush up on your Finnish culture. Per capita, Finland boasts the most saunas and heavy metal bands. If you didn't know that before, now you know.
Nokia has to be enjoying all this additional attention. The hashtag #Nokia has accumulated more than 120K impressions, while Nokia's Twitter handle is among this conversation's most tweeted. Its handle @Nokia has amassed more than 121K impressions.
Balmain& H&M collabo create Black Friday-level designer shopping frenzy
People love the collaboration between H&M and Balmain. If the door-busting scenes at store locations wasn't enough proof, perhaps the 125K+ tweets within the last seven days reveals more.
The sentiment around this collaboration is highly positive as over 70% of sentiment-categorized tweets are positive.
Negative mentions are comprised mostly of people expressing their disappointment in not being able to buy the pieces they wanted from the collection, and the reasons range from not having enough money to pieces being sold out already.
Regardless, this conversation is huge with the hashtag #HMBalmaination being used over 28K times and accumulating more than 333 million impressions.