It’s great to work with such a well-known publisher and see PostRank engagement data used to bolster offline traditional media analysis in such an important way. We think it’s a great example of how traditional media is looking forward and seeing how the social web can be valuable in performing research, expanding reach, and keeping relevant to their audiences.

From the case study, a bit more about Atlantic Wire’s goals and intentions with The Atlantic 50 project:

With the Atlantic 50, The Atlantic Wire intends to be the go-to op-ed page by aggregating the latest opinions from a defined set of opinion makers, found across the web. There is so much opinion out there, in blogs and on mainstream media sites like newspapers’ and magazines’ online properties. The Atlantic 50 is intended to appeal to an educated, media literate audience who read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and similar publications, but simply don’t have time for thorough reading, including the op-ed page, every day.

The Atlantic Wire team has framed current political commentary in two ways, as a result. Readers can browse by topic and see what’s currently “hot” among pundits and their audiences. These are stories on the topics currently getting the most engagement from online information consumers like themselves. From healthcare to the economy, it’s to find out what’s being talked about, and what different folks’ take on the issues are.

Additionally, the opinion makers of The Atlantic 50 are ranked by the amount of engagement their content is currently receiving. The list is updated regularly, so where they fall in the rankings in a result of how their audiences are reading, organizing, sharing, and responding to their commentary, rather than being based on editorial judgment or assessment of political leanings.

Keep your eye on The Atlantic Wire and, whether you lean left, right, or just love great online news and opinion coverage, let us know what you think of The Atlantic 50.

In absolute terms, when we sample over the top 1000 of the most engaging feeds for the past three years, we see approximately a 30% year over year growth in engagement –- a sign that more people are participating in the social web. The “share, and like this” phenomenon, which is sweeping through Facebook, Twitter, and dozens of other social hubs, are all facilitating this trend.

Not surprisingly, as the mind-share of these social hubs grows, the conversations and discussions about the content are increasingly happening off the publisher’s property. Between 2007 and 2009, the amount of on-site engagement has dropped by over 50%, while the off-site engagement has skyrocketed!

Larger audiences & highly engaged communities

Looking across the different types of activity (PostRank’s 5Cs of Engagement), it is clear that trackbacks, which were previously the primary means of engaging in conversations, are becoming dwarfed by the lighter modes of engagement. From 2007 to 2009, the contribution of trackbacks to total engagement has dropped from 19% to 3%! In the meantime, channels such as Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook have gone up from less than 1% to over 29%. For publishers, this is great news: larger audiences, more conversations, and more engaged communities. That is, as long as you have the tools to track this long tail of distributed conversations across the social web (shameless plug: PostRank Analytics).

Content Discovery & Distribution within the Social Web

An interesting side effect of the widespread adoption of more pervasive communication tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) is the increased lifespan of a typical story. Back in 2007, we observed that over 94% of all the engagement occurred within the first day of publishing the article. Even more interestingly, the 98% of the engagement on that first day occurred within the first hour. In other words, the half-life of a story was, and still is, less than an hour!

Fast forward to 2008 and 2009, and we’re seeing a steady increase in the lifespan of a story: down to 83% of total engagement for the first hour in 2008, and 64% in 2009. While the real-time web is all about lowering the latency, the pervasive nature and number of people engaged in their communities and conversations (the Social Web) is helping with information discovery. What we’re observing are the effects of strengthening the weak ties.

Engaging with the Social Web

The social web is growing fast. With 30% year over year growth we can expect both the number of people and the amount of their participation to steadily increase, which will translate into more feedback loops for the publishers. At the same time, the “share this” phenomenon shows no signs of stopping, and the deployment of “one click participation” mechanisms such as Twitter’s new retweet functionality, or Facebook’s “like” button, means that each one of us is becoming (if not already) a content curator. In other words, the distribution of content is becoming truly distributed.

Anyone who worries about the monoculture effect of niche networks should breathe a sigh of relief — the data indicates the complete opposite. Even as we organize ourselves into micro-networks of interests, the weak ties that everyone brings are helping the content to travel further and over longer periods of time. Increased lifespan of a story from 2007 to 2009 is case in point.

The challenge: while the consumers are trying to wade their way through the abundance of content, very few publishers understand how to properly engage with the social web. After all, if over 50% of the engagement happens in the first hour, which is also definitely not driven by Google, then how do you optimize and better engage with your audience? Fire and forget is not a strategy, and as random as the behaviour of these social networks may seem, there is a method to the madness.

How do you do it?

When we first launched, we only accepted Visa and Mastercard, however, that wasn’t entirely clear. We’ve now got our system set up to accept American Express as well, and are updating all customers who signed up using an AMEX card.

Annual Subscriptions

We had a lot of requests for this feature, so now, in addition to offering PostRank Analytics for $9/month, you can also sign up for Analytics annually, for $99. You’re getting two months free! Annual plan subscribers get the 30-day free trial same as monthly subscribers.

Tool Tips

We’ve had some questions about how engagement and Analytics work, so we’ve been working on more and better explanations. There’s the About Engagement page, and we’ve introduced tool tips for key features and concepts as well. Just mouse over any grey icons with question marks to learn more about that feature.

Coming Soon: multi-feed support

We’ve had lots of request for this as well, and so it’s well under way. This functionality will enable a user to manage and monitor multiple feeds (blogs, etc.) from their Analytics account. It should be available within a week or so.

Also in the future we will be building multi-author support, i.e. group blogs where multiple people may create content for the same site.

Other Stuff

In “not quite done yet” news, we’ve had some issues recently that have affected some posts being added to feeds, resulting in delays. It’s slowly but surely improving, but not 100% fixed yet. I know those who’ve reported it are probably rather tired of me telling them, “We know, and we’re working on it…”, but… yeah. We are. I’d offer a hard date if I could, but it’s all about the machines right now.

We’re sorry for the frustration, and we’re getting that part of the system responsible upgraded as quickly as possible, but of course each step comes with additional tasks that need to be done, and occasionally unwelcome surprises. It’s taking much longer than we (and you) would like, but I will let everyone know as soon as things are working right across the board.

As always, we want to hear from you about how we can make PostRank Analytics even more useful and valuable (and if you’re seeing issues with your feed, let me know that, too). Send us your questions, feedback, or issues any time.

Each year, 20 tech companies, innovating in the fields of clean technologies, information technology and digital media, are selected to showcase their product or service for the CIX community.

On December 2nd, at the Design Exchange in Toronto, each company will deliver a 7-minute presentation about what they’re doing, where they’re headed, and how it’s changing the world. A judging panel of industry experts will evaluate each company’s product and provide constructive feedback and guidance.

The community present at the event will then vote for the winner of the CIX 2009 Award for “Canadian Innovation Leader”. 
(Fingers crossed!)

The PostRank team submitted an application focusing on innovations in web analytics. When asked to describe why our innovation deserves to be one of the CIX Top 20, this is, in part, what we had to say:

Our algorithms are based on actual audience activity, so scoring is not subjective to opinion, and takes into account many more factors that contribute to how content and publishers become influential online.

PostRank’s real-time, content-focused functionality enables people to discover engagement with ALL their content, not just “magic” words. It also enables seeing how the audience is reacting as it happens, facilitating immediate interaction to answer questions, provide additional information, and build relationships.

PostRank is in some pretty illustrious company on the list, and we want to extend extra big congratulations to the other Kitchener-Waterloo companies representing: Aeryon Labs, IGLOO, and Metranome. And also to Overlay.TV, which, along with Metranome and PostRank, are Tech Capital portfolio companies.

As we blogged earlier this week, now when you login to your Analytics, you’ll notice a new Trends tab. This page features information on:

• engagement events and their relation to engagement points
• where your content is being picked up geographically
• your engagement breakdown by social site.

Real-Time Google Analytics

At the recent eMetrics conference, Google announced that their Analytics service was now almost entirely real-time. To ensure your PostRank Analytics don’t lose any of that important timeliness and velocity, we’ve upgraded our system so that your Google Analytics metrics are presented in near real-time here as well. (They’re updated hourly.)

Change Password

You can now manage your own password changes. When you’re logged in to your Analytics account, if you click on the Your Account tab, Change Your Password is now one of the left sidebar options.

Edit Payment Info

Once you’ve signed up, everything should be processed smoothly from month to month. But just in case it isn’t, we’ve added a function to enable you to update your payment information. Update your payment information at any time when you’re logged in to your Analytics account. Click on the Your Account tab in the left sidebar and select Edit Payment Info. If your payment is declined, you will receive email notification, and next time you login to Analytics, you will automatically be brought to this page.

We’ve been working hard on implementing your feedback and our ideas for how we can make PostRank Analytics even more useful and valuable to you. And we’re just getting started! As always, we love to hear from you, so send us your questions, feedback, or issues any time.

Read up on local companies that are changing the world and doing business building technologies in wide-ranging specialties, from healthcare, to robotics, to wildlife conservation.

And, of course, PostRank has some excellent coverage, with the snazzy ad James developed on page 28, a majestic photo of Carol on page 19, and the PostRank profile on page 66.

Check it out and get to know us and our brainy, hip, world-changing neighbours, too.

PS. On page 24 there’s a guy who installs radio transmitters in fish bellies. Seriously.

PostRank understands these priorities well, and to that end we’ve recently added Michael Amygdalydis (Ah-mig-dah-lee-deez) and Ryan Caught to our development team. Since we’re still waiting the CSIS reports on these gents, in the mean time you can get to know them via their profiles from our About Us page, which are guaranteed to contain at least, oh… 37% true information.

Michael started his programming career when his dad asked him for some help with printing envelopes and he wrote an application to handle the company’s financial records. Since then he’s walked a path precipitously close to the dark side of large enterprise, almost turning into a glassy-eyed automaton, drinking the Kool-Aid while droning on about “synergy between core competencies” and “value-added turnkey solutions”. Fortunately, Ruby’s shining light reactivated his latent love of making awesome things that matter, and he’s been writing Ruby ever since. When not coding, he runs pen and paper RPGs, tries to improve his game at the company foosball table, and spends 20 minutes a day repeating the spelling of his last name to outsourced customer service agents.

Ryan wandered in off the street one day, and by the time we noticed, he’d already set up a workstation and checked in some code. It seemed to work pretty well, so we decided to let him stay. Like Michael, Ryan comes to PostRank from the consulting world, so he brings an invigorating combination of “ideas” and “free will” to the table. (We’re keeping a close eye on that…) While he has worked in any number of languages, Ryan’s our Python guru, which would be way cooler if he was a herpetologist. (I am strenuously avoiding making a Crocodile Hunter joke here.) Originally from Australia, like many of his countrypersons, Ryan enjoys complaining about Canadian weather and the quirks of retail (seriously, mention our sales tax to an Australian – good times). In his spare time he is passionate about ultimate frisbee and doling out smackdowns to people who reference shrimps on barbies. You have been warned.

We’ve already posted about our first round of upgrades and fixes, and we’ll be telling you about Analytics improvements weekly.

This week, we’ve got a really cool addition to the Analytics functionality to tell you about: Trends! Thanks to you for asking for this and for telling us what you wanted to see in it. We already have some ideas for version two, so stay tuned!

Analytics customers may already have noticed the new Trends tab when they login to Analytics. This page features information on:

• engagement events and their relation to engagement points
• where your content is being picked up geographically
• your engagement breakdown by social site.

So what does that all mean?

Engagement Events / Engagement Points

What is the composition of your posts’ engagement scores? Do you get a wide variety of engagement types (clicks, comments, tweets, diggs, etc.)? Or does your content tend to mostly garner a few specific types of engagement (e.g. you’re regularly the king or queen of Delicious)? Tracking this graph’s engagement profile over time to shows how audience sharing of your content is evolving.

A more in-depth explanation of engagement: Engagement Explained.

Geographic Distribution

View the top 8 countries where your engagement is coming from (by percentage). Also displays the total number of visitors to your site, and you can expand the list to see every country where engagement has come from.

Engagement by Social Site

Week by week this graph breaks down where your engagement came from on the social web. It also shows by percentage how much of your total engagement each source represents. You can customize the graph by adding or removing sources for comparisons.

You asked us for more trending information, and we listened. Take your Analytics Trends for a spin and let us know what you think!

It’s often a gamble to run with an unconference style, but with that room and the excellent facilitation the board filled up quick. It was great to connect with so many great people in one place. 

The discussions were many and engaging and it was great to meet folks in person and put real faces to names (or avatars).

Highlights for us were the update on Pubsubhubub, critiquing Echo, the latest in comment systems from js-kit, and getting glimpses of new moves from Pheedo.

PostRank ramped up to the event with a pair of blog posts, the first: Architecting the Real-Time Web, followed up by: Filtering the Real-Time Web.

We’re excited to participate in this conversation and look forward to talking about filtering with social engagement data. If you have thoughts or ideas in this area we’d love to hear about it!

We’ve just made a PDF version of Architecture & Filtering Technologies for the Real-Time Web, so check it out and let us know what you think.

Sure, there’s plenty of info and opinion out there about local 800lb gorillas like RIM and OpenText, but what are things like among some of the smaller companies? Who are the 800lb gorillas of tomorrow? Votes were cast in 5 categories:

• Most Likely to Win BIG
• Best Tech Team
• Best Leadership
• Best Product
• Best Place to Work

and the results are in! we’re pretty chuffed to be able to report that PostRank was the only company to place in the top 5 in every category. Sure, coming in first in every category would have been awesome, but we actually like the competition a lot, so we’re cool with the results.

Big congratulations to our friends at Well.ca, who came in tops in the overall rankings (most points). They deserve every bit of the kudos (though we’ll totally kick your well-exfoliated butts next year!)

The commentary on the voting and rankings at the bottom of the page is interesting, too. I’d love to know specifics like where people who voted live and work, but I think it does point to the tech community in the KW area needing to do a bit more to market our companies, our skills, and ourselves to the world. Fortunately, given the cool products and tech, brilliant people, and great culture we have going on around here, this should not prove difficult.

Photo source.