My name is @kevinweil and I'm on the analytics team at Twitter. The convergence of sports, brands, and culture around the Super Bowl makes for a particularly fascinating set of tweets to follow. Fans of the @NFL watch the Super Bowl for the football and others enjoy the spectacle for the commercials. We were curious to understand how these groups interacted with Twitter as the game unfolded.

We categorized each incoming tweet as about the Super Bowl itself, about the brands or the commercials, or neither. Dividing each group by the total volume of tweets, we produced the graph below which represents a minute-by-minute reflection of people's thoughts and emotions during the game.

The horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis is a percentage: the blue line is the percentage of tweets, relative to the total worldwide tweet volume, that were about the Super Bowl each minute, while the red line is the percentage of tweets that were about brands or commercials. Click the image for a more detailed version.


You can see excitement spike with the kickoff at marker A. Everyone watching was geared up for the first commercial break at marker B, hoping for funny or memorable ads; as soon as the first commercial break began, viewers were immediately tweeting about it. The first @DoritosUSA ad at marker C caused the largest per-minute volume of commercial-related tweets -- for the minute following the ad, related tweets were 19% of all tweets we saw, eclipsing even the chatter around the Super Bowl itself for a brief period. Back in the game, excited or dismayed tweets following the first @Colts touchdown at marker D formed nearly 40% of all tweets that minute. The second half began with a bang as @TheSaints recovered a surprise onside kick, and for the next minute 44% of all worldwide tweets were about football. Chatter around brands had meanwhile dropped to much lower levels until @Google's Parisian Love commercial sparked viewers once more. Excitement around the game grew steadily with large peaks following scores and turnovers up until the final moments. As the game ended, one out of every two tweets on Twitter was about the Super Bowl!

Every day millions of people interact with Twitter to share and discover what's happening now. Major events like the Super Bowl focus people around a few common topics. There is real value in being able to measure the reach and influence of those topics in real time, and we in the analytics team are looking forward to a lot more where this came from. On to the Winter Olympics...

Because many of you use twitter.com to read and write tweets, we've been spending some time focusing on ways to improve your experience on the site. Today, we're introducing a feature called Hovercards that will be a handy way to interact with the folks behind each tweet.

Hovercards will be rolled out in stages so not all of you will be seeing them right away.

There are more than fifty thousand registered applications on the Twitter platform. These applications represent the creativity, ingenuity, and talent of a growing number of developers and companies building innovative new ways to interact with the Twitter information network. There are thousands of individuals who work on Twitter—over one hundred of these individuals actually work at 795 Folsom Street in San Francisco but many platform developers work in offices, coffee shops, apartments, and even friend's couches around the world.

We want to get together with some of you and celebrate the chutzpah that goes into so many of the apps built on the Twitter platform with our first ever official Twitter conference especially for developers called Chirp. The word Tweet is a noun defined as the chirp of a small or young bird. The Twitter ecosystem is still very young so naming this conference Chirp felt right. For all the details and information about the event please visit Chirp, The Official Twitter Developer Conference web site. Carsonified are helping us so it's going to be awesome. See you there!

Twitter trends began as a way to shed light on popular conversations. It's interesting to know that one topic can now spread across the world in real-time, and Trends help us discover which of those topics are paramount on a global scale.

Since President René Préval and others issued appeals for humanitarian aid, there has been a massively coordinated global response to begin rebuilding Haiti. In addition to governments and organizations doing their part, technology has played a meaningful role. Donations accepted via SMS, Facebook attracting and educating thousands of concerned individuals, Google providing satellite imagery tools to relief workers, iTunes and Download to Donate converting everyday purchases into emergency funding—software augments humanity in a meaningful way and the arts unite us.

We're thrilled to have been invited to join a stunning assemblage of industries and individuals who are combining forces to raise proceeds for Haiti and make certain that the life cycle of this particular humanitarian mission extends long after the initial burst of compassion. Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief will be the most widely distributed telethon in history both internationally and across all media platforms. This broadcast marks the first US based telethon to air in China as well. On the evening of Friday, January 22, 2010 global citizens will come together in support of those in need.

The lineup for this program includes more than one hundred of the biggest names in film, television, and music. Proceeds from the telethon will go to The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, United Nations World Food Programme, Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, and Yele Haiti Foundation. This effort can be a testament to the positive global impact we're capable of achieving when we focus on a common goal. Tune in however you like and contribute if you can. We've curated additional resources and suggestions at Hope140.org.

Hi, I'm Josh and I work in the product team at Twitter. One of the areas I'm working on is helping new users get started so they know how to find and discover what interests them. Today we're making the first of many changes here to help people ease into the twitterverse by finding and following accounts that interest them.

Two of the biggest challenges for new users have been finding accounts to follow that appeal to their interests, and finding their friends and colleagues who tweet. Over time, we've learned that by making suggestions of who to follow, we can help users get going more easily on Twitter. In our new design, we're taking some steps to continue to improve this process. Once a user signs up and selects what they're interested in, we show them some accounts that relate to that interest. Next, we help them find their friends and colleagues by checking their address books, and third we give them a chance to search for anyone we or they missed in this process.


We've found that the power of suggestion can be a great thing to help people get started, but it's important that we suggest things relevant to them. We've created a number of algorithms to identify users across a variety of clusters who tweet actively and are engaged with their audiences. These new algorithms help us group these active users into lists of users by interests. Rather than suggesting a random set of 20 users for a new user to follow, now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists. These lists will be refreshed frequently as the algorithms identify new users who should be suggested in these lists and some that are not as engaging to new users will be removed. We also have a set of "Staff Picks" that are manually selected by Twitter employees as some of our favorites. Given the recent tragedy in Haiti, we've also created a special "Staff Picks for Haiti" to get updated news and content on what's happening there.

We're really excited about this change, and look forward to continually improving the experience for all users to discover the best content and get the most out of Twitter.

"Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?" This quote made famous by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. strikes at the heart of what it means to be a mindful participant in any community. On an international level this week, people are joining forces to heal Haiti. Together, we're proving that we're wired to help.

On Monday, the Twitter offices will be closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. People all over the United States are urged to honor Dr. King’s legacy by making this holiday a national day of service. The Corporation for National Community Service has set up a web site to help us find a volunteer opportunity in our local community.

The folks behind the @ServeDotGov Twitter account and serve.gov site want to hear about your efforts. If you find a volunteer opportunity that interests you, go for it! Tweet about your experience as you learn about different ways to get involved, volunteer in your neighborhood or town, and be sure to add #MLKDay to spread the word.

International relief efforts are underway in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, after yesterday's devastating magnitude 7 earthquake. The atmosphere at Twitter HQ is heavy today and based on the Trending Topics an overwhelming number of Twitter users feel the same.

Easy Ways To Help
Many of us are wondering how we can contribute to the healing process. A few simple but effective ways to help have emerged.

• The American Red Cross allows anyone in the US to text HAITI to 90999 as an easy way to donate $10 to the recovery effort. The money is billed to your mobile phone account.
• Musician Wyclef Jean's Haiti-focused organization, Yele is also accepting text-message donations. To donate $5, text Yele to 501501 or visit the foundation's web site.
• Oxfam International has also set up an earthquake response fund. You can visit their web site to make a donation to this fund.

To follow each of these recovery efforts as they progress, we can follow @redcross, @wyclef, and @oxfam. The Huffington Post, CNN, and The New York Times have spent time curating special lists to track events related to Haiti.

Newsworthy, funny, interesting, or important—tweets find their way into our lives more and more. Sawhorse Media is organizing the second annual Shorty Awards as a fun way to show appreciation to the people behind the tweets we read every day. Voting has opened in 27 official categories with room for more at your suggestion. An awards ceremony, complete with 140-character acceptance speeches, will be held in March in New York City and live streamed on the web. Check out the official rules to learn how to vote.