Blog > January 2012

The Sizzle: Sweden’s file sharing religion. The Fri-Up: Iowa. The Sauce: Rats.

The Sizzle

• Photo flagging on Facebook – offensive or unattractive?
• Sweden recognises new file-sharing religion
• Barnes & Noble eyes Nook options
• Who is Scott Thompson?
• Tech Firms Compete for Rock Stars

The Fri-Up

Iowa Caucus

The Iowa caucuses marked the first official contest to pick a contender to face Democratic President Barack Obama in the 6 November presidential election.

Let’s take a look at the mentions timeline across Twitter and the reaction to Santorum’s near win.

Fig 1. History graph to show candidates from 3rd Jan to 6th Jan by the hour (please note that hours are GMT)

Click graph to see full size

• We see that there is a Twitter tussle between Ron Paul and  Mitt Romney before the announcement.
• Followed by a massive spike for Rick Santorum as the surprise news is announced that he  is just eight votes behind Mitt Romney.
• Shortly afterwards, Michelle Bachmann gets in on the action.

The overall graphs showing volumes of tweets for the period running up to the election are more or less in line with the voting:

Fig 2. Associated Press graph showing percentage of votes per candidate: 

Brandwatch graph on overall volume of tweets for each candidate from Dec 30th to Jan 5th

Click graph to see full size

So there we have it – despite the exclamations of surprise and the satire following Santorum’s near win (which sent Santorum trending on Twitter), Mitt Romney is still ahead in the Twitter chat overall.

The Sauce

Something for the weekend:

• “There’s a rat in my cubicle, what am I gonna do?”
• Women laughing alone with Salad
• Scandal at London Zoo

Hope you enjoyed the Friday#, have a great weekend.

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