Twitter analytics

There is a fascinating post on the official Twitter blog from yesterday entitled "Super Data".

The core of the post is a simple graph showing the number of tweets about the Super Bowl game itself and the number of tweets about the adverts shown during the breaks (which are apparently almost as hotly awaited as the game itself?).

It seems to me that this opens up a whole new world of metrics for marketers.

Rather than just seeing who tuned in to a show at a specific time they can focus on what they were saying and thinking at specific moments and how they reacted to every twist and turn of the game.

Obviously you need a huge audience to gather the data (it probably won't be that useful for your firm's next employment law seminar for example), but I'm sure the companies who paid a fortune for Super Bowl advertising slots will find it very interesting.

If the level of Twitter takeup were high enough then I could easily see this being used to target dynamic ads during popular TV shows which were selected based on the demographic, location and interest of the twittering audience. Even if a third if the audience were tweeting, I would imagine you could extrapolate from that with some accuracy.

It is also a little scary - whilst I know that anyone can read my tweets, the thought of someone being able to use the "back channel" in this way to target advertising at me seems a little 1984!