We hope you will join us in celebrating the launch of Twitalyzer 4.0 as of January 1, 2011! Some of the exciting new features we have quietly added since our 3.0 release last year include:

• New, lower pricing at the Individual and Agency level
• Entirely new, easier to read graphs and charts
• Automatic network discovery for Agency customers
• Customization of the metrics report (show/hide and move)
• Even more accurate tracking including Twitter RT method
• Daily and weekly “all tweet” archives in downloadable format
• Non-Flash views for iPhone, iPad, and other Flash-free devices
• Tighter Google Analytics integration
• Data export functionality in all relevant reports
• More link shorteners including ow.ly and others from HootSuite
• Entirely new administration options including Export and Report managers
• Integration with PeerIndex for additional data and topics
• Calculation of Potential and Effective Reach in Twitter
• Tracking of Direct Messages (DMs) by daily and aggregate volume
• True daily reporting for dozens of key metrics
• New “Friends” report and improved “Location” report
• Addition of “Topics” and “Community” reporting
• Fully upgraded API for Agency customers including access to trend data
• Addition of our GetSatisfaction customer support portal
• Many incremental user interface improvements

The most obvious change is our decision to start charging for the vast majority of Twitalyzer’s reports. Again, this decision was made only after great deliberation, but it is one that we at Twitalyzer believe is crucial to our continued success. We hope you will support us in this decision and contribute as little as $4.99 per month to our success as we help you measure your own in Twitter.

We welcome your feedback on the entire 4.0 upgrade in our community forums.

Sincerely,

Eric Peterson
CEO and Founder
Twitalyzer, LLC.

In our effort to be perfectly transparent with our entire user community, Jeff and I wanted to share information about some important changes that will be coming to Twitalyzer around the first of the year.  Specifically, in the context of Twitter’s recent announcement to start offering some type of analytics solution, we have decided to redouble our efforts and invest heavily in Twitalyzer’s growth as the most robust, most useful, and most well supported platform for measurement and analytics for Twitter.

Twitalyzer is really just two guys, Jeff Katz and Eric Peterson, both of whom have spent a fair amount of time working in the digital measurement space.  For the past two years we have spent our evenings, weekends, and free moments devising new ways to help businesses & organizations understand and optimize their efforts in short-message media (e.g., Twitter.)  With our 3.0 release earlier this year, we made the jump from “free” to “freemium” and added hundreds of paying customers, a number that we are proud to say continues to increase every week. 

With paying customers we believe ourselves obligated to provide the best possible service and support.  This commitment is already manifest in a variety of ways:

• Rapid response to customer issues via Twitter and email
• Rapid evolution to the platform, including the addition of specific functionality that customers request
• The addition of documentation and support materials to ensure that everyone gets the most out of Twitalyzer
• The recent creation of our GetSatisfaction site to ensure that all our users have the ability to engage us directly

We think we are doing pretty good, but we want to be doing more than pretty good, we want to be awesome. To this end, starting in early January, Twitalyzer is going to make the shift from a largely free solution to a largely paid solution.

Some of our more popular reports — user profile, metrics, and reach — will continue to be freely available to everyone, and we are committed to improving those reports and ensuring that every user can still benefit from the system, regardless of their ability to pay.  But as of early January 2011 the vast majority of reports provided in Twitalyzer will only be available to paying customers.

By making this change, we will be able accelerate our awesomeness and do things like:

• Hire awesome support staff to ensure that all customers get the most from Twitalyzer
• Hire awesome programmers to improve system stability and performance
• Hire awesome designers to improve our user interface and reports
• Hire awesome marketers to help spread our message

Our goal from the beginning was to become the most widely used and widely valued real-time measurement platform for Twitter in the world.  We are 100% committed to Twitalyzer’s long-term success, and we hope you will support us in that commitment.

In order to make the transition as painless as possible we are going to do three things:

• Lower the cost of our least expensive option from $9.99 per month to $4.99 per month for a single account tracked;
• Lower the cost of our most expensive option from $199.99 per month to $99.99 per month for up to 100 accounts tracked;
• Introduce new payment options including annual invoices to ensure that everyone who wants Twitalyzer will have access to Twitalyzer.

Even better, we are rolling out our new pricing today so that everyone can benefit from lower monthly costs.

We understand that this decision will not be popular with some of our users, but we do hope all of you understand why we are making the decision.  We hope that by starting this conversation about this change now we will have an opportunity to discuss the ramifications and resolve any individual challenges well ahead of the change in early January.  We also hope that if you have any concerns whatsoever about this change that you will reach out to us directly to discuss those concerns and give us a chance to demonstrate our commitment to our customers, this product, and your success.

Both Jeff and I have been repeatedly humbled by your support, and for that we thank you all. 

Sincerely,

Eric Peterson
CEO and Founder
Twitalyzer, LLC.

Just like everyone working to build a business based on Twitter, we at Twitalyzer have always been somewhat circumspect about the relationship we have with “the source.” Twitter’s leadership has always been kind of vague about which direction they would take the business, especially when asked about making money. Our hesitation has ebbed and flowed over the past year — increasing when @biz said that they would be doing analytics, decreasing when we saw their “Enterprise” dashboards, increasing when they started changing their terms of service, decreasing after Chirp when we thought we understood their strategy, etc.

June 10th was another roller-coaster ride given Twitter’s acquisition of Dabble DB, makers of the Google Analytics tchotchke Trendly.

At first Jeff and I were bummed; just like all the folks developing Twitter apps for iPhone, anyone building an advertising solution, the Co-Tweets and Hootsuites of the world working to build business-management solutions on the platform, we kind of felt like we’d done a bunch of work to make Twitter more valuable only to have the rug pulled out from under us.

But we thought about it for a little bit and remembered that Twitter never made us any promises. We knew full well when we started investing time and energy into Twitalyzer that Twitter could invest in analytics like this at any time, at least when we were being honest with ourselves.

More importantly, we can’t succeed with Twitalyzer unless Twitter succeeds as a platform. While we love Twitter and all the great things the platform powers, we are also practical enough to realize that unless they figure out a way to become a real business that all our work could be for naught. And despite the amazing work their developers have done over the past year, this weeks API outage emphasizes that Twitter is still very much a work in progress. If Ev and Biz believe advertising and analytics are their path to stability and profitability, well, who are we to complain?

Finally, we love that Twitter thinks that analytics on the platform is important enough to make this acquisition! Sure, we wish they would have bought us or our friends at Klout, but we’re happy for Dabble and we are absolutely excited to know that Twitter will be doing our marketing for us, emphasizing the need for analytics against the platform and the value of measuring success in Twitter-based marketing and customer relationship management.

Given all of this, I personally wanted to reiterate our commitment to our users and customers:

1. Twitalyzer will provide highest-quality measurement and reporting on Twitter for as long as we are able. Unless Twitter changes their terms of use (again) and forces us out of business, we will continue to develop against the platform and provide the same or better services we have for the past year;
2. Twitalyzer’s customers will continue to be our number one commitment. When we decided to take people’s money, we knew we were “all in” on Twitalyzer and nothing about Twitter buying Dabble DB changes that. “Money changes everything” they say, but we are going to work tirelessly to make sure that money changes everything for the better;
3. Our payment model will stay the same, and customers will always be able to cancel anytime for any reason. We’re optimists, but we’re also realists. If Twitter comes out with an analytics package significantly better than Twitalyzer we would expect customers to want to switch and won’t get in the way.

.

We are self-funded, profitable, and not beholden to anyone except ourselves and our customers. This great luxury allows us to continue to innovate and do what we believe is best for our customers, our business, and our friends. Not everyone has this luxury — certainly not Twitter — so we are going to make the most of our opportunity regardless of how the ecosystem around us evolves.

I welcome any questions you have about this post, our business, or the Twitalyzer service. Email me at eric at twitalyzer dot com, tweet to me at @erictpeterson, or give me a call at (503) 282-2601.

Sincerely,

Eric T. Peterson
CEO and Founder
Twitalyzer, LLC

We are extremely excited to be releasing this version of Twitalyzer which greatly enhances our services with expanded capabilities for businesses and agencies. You, our loyal users, have told us what you want and need to help gain further insights into your Twitter usage – You want more control of your data and you want to get at it more efficiently. We have made considerable strides in achieving those goals and we believe you will find this latest version of Twitalyzer even better!

In addition to continuing to offer the most robust twitter analytics service for free, Twitalyzer now provides several advanced features with three cost-effective subscription options.

Advanced Subscription Options

While Twitalyzer continues to offer the most robust Twitter Analytics solution for free, we now provide many new advanced features for businesses & agencies with three cost-effective subscription options.

• Automatic daily updates: Ensures that your account is processed twice a day.
• Multiple account tracking: Associate multiple authenticated Twitter accounts with your primary account and then move seamlessly between accounts for easy access and comparisons.
• Competitive analysis: Our Agency subscription allows you to track the complete set of Twitalyzer metrics for any account in Twitter Keep track of your clients’ accounts or competition, monitor the Twitter “elite”, or research potential customers
• Complete data export: Full access to all of the information collected & stored for an account
• Custom date ranges: Generate monthly, quarterly, annual, or campaign-specific views across all the metrics.
• Weekly Reports: For Business and Agency subscriptions, a weekly email summary of the previous two weeks activity. Week-over-week changes for key Twitalyzer data, top Network, and top Retweeters to make sure you stay up to date on all of your accounts. You can also send this report to others in your department or even a business partner.

User Interface Updates

• “Less is more” approach towards data
• Summary view popup for all users
• Switch user profile without losing context
• Added functionality to processing engine; now gathering Twitter “retweets” for inclusion in all metrics

New & Enhanced Reports

• Profile. Less is more! View your Impact Score, Influencer Type and Location as well as your current Network
• Metrics: The Metric reports shows the 20 metrics and measures in one place. Newly added metrics are Retweeted per 1k followers, Retweet Ratio, References per 1k followers, Reference Ratio and Klout Score
• Tweet Tracking: See how far any tweet reached by potential Impressions and overall Tweet Impact.
• Comparison: Visualize side-by-side comparison of Twitalyzer’s key metrics of two users.
• Personality: Leveraging our partner TweetPsych’s social and psychological data, compare your Twitter psychological profile with any Twitter user.
• Lists: Create Lists in Twitalyzer and Twitter and see how the recent scores and activity for all of the users on your various lists compare.
• Influencer Types: A categorization we derive from work done by Forrester Research. The three types we track include:
  • Sources are individuals with smaller networks who are often originating ideas in Twitter
  • Spiders are individuals with mid-sized networks who are socially connected
  • Suns are individuals with large to very large networks of first-level connections
• Activity By Day: Formerly known as the Trends reports, this report displays average values of the metrics based on the selected timeframe. Business and Agency subscription users can also create and export data in custom date ranges.
• Last Seven Days: A great visual snapshot to how active you were in the past 7 days including updates, mentions and retweets.
  Activity by Hour: Another great visual snapshot of when what hours of the day you were most active including updates, mentions and retweets.
• Activity by Hour: Another great visual snapshot of when what hours of the day you were most active including updates, mentions and retweets.

If you have any questions or comments, check out our help page for FAQs, metric definitions and contact information

MARCH 23, 2010 – PORTLAND, OREGON – Twitalyzer LLC, a product of Web Analytics Demystified, is pleased to announce a partnership with Viralheat, by bringing more insight to its leading social media measurement platform.

“We think understanding who is shaping the conversation is a key ingredient in crafting a better social media marketing campaign” says Raj Kadam, CEO of Viralheat “and Twitalyzer definitely helps our customers achieve that goal by providing rich behavioral analytics on Twitter users.”

Viralheat allows brands, PR agencies and digital agencies to measure the impact of their social media marketing campaigns on sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google Buzz, Youtube and others. Viralheat can also identify the handful of people that are the de-factor conversation shapers for your campaign. Engaging with influencers on Twitter and making meaningful connections can make or break a marketing campaign or one’s brand perception. Viralheat brings even more detail to authors on Twitter with its Twitalyzer integration. Twitalyzer is the leading provider of measurement and analysis services for Twitter. Viralheat users, with a click of the mouse, can bring up information about any Twitter author and gauge influence, impact, and engagement on Twitalyzer right from within Viralheat’s social media analytics dashboard.

Jeff Katz of Twitalyzer adds “We are excited that Viralheat has selected Twitalyzer to be part of their social measurement ecosystem. Viralheat customers will now have the ability to understand the impact and influence of any Twitter account within the Viralheat Dashboard, as well as being to able to quickly and easily access Twitalyzer for additional data with one click.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Twitalyzer is a free service available at http://twitalzyer.com. For more information about the service contact Eric T. Peterson ([email protected], @erictpeterson) at 503-282-2601 or Jeff Katz ([email protected], @katzpdx) at 503-805-6901.

FEBRUARY 23, 2010 – PORTLAND, OREGON – Twitalyzer LLC, a product of Web Analytics Demystified, are pleased to announce that Twitalyzer is part of TweetMeme’s new Follow Button. “Twitalyzer was the only solution we considered to provide Twitter user behavioural data,” says Nick Halstead, CEO of TweetMeme (@NickHalstead). “While primarily a business application, Twitalyzer gives a unique and fascinating view into how millions of people use Twitter, which makes them a perfect integration partner for our Twitter Follow Button.”

Twitalyzer is the leading provider of measurement and analysis services for Twitter with nearly 10,000 active users. Freely available to all, Twitalyzer contains over a dozen useful and actionable reports for businesses, social media experts, and individuals working to improve their impact and influence in this revolutionary new medium. Presented in an easy-to-use format, Twitalyzer measures 30 different data, analyzes sentiment, tracks against goals, and provides specific recommendations for how to become a Twitter power-user.

“We are excited to be included in TweetMeme’s new Follow Button solution,” says Eric T. Peterson, founder of Twitalyzer. “Given that their Retweet Button is on over 100,000 sites including Time, Wired, Washington Post, TechCrunch, and Mashable, and that they’re serving nearly 300 million buttons a day, we believe this is the largest effort to bring rich analytics to a widespread audience in the history of social media.”

Following the launch of version 2.0 on January 1, 2010, Twitalyzer has been experiencing explosive growth. Active users include some of the best known names in retail, technology, sports and entertainment, government and politics, nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations, and many of the best known social media experts working today.

“Many Portlanders know that I’m a big supporter of using Twitter to increase dialogue between City Hall and Portlanders every day,” said Portland, Oregon Mayor Sam Adams (@MayorSamAdams). “The entrepreneurs behind Twitalyzer are defining the business opportunity of this great social medium, and helping users in the public and private sector do a better job of communicating with our customers and constituents. I’m incredibly proud that Portland is home to this great new venture.”

Additionally, agencies around the globe are using Twitalyzer to better inform their PR and advertising client about their successes in Twitter. Twitalyzer is currently being used as part of Edelman’s Tweetlevel application and is an integrated part of dozens of other regular social media analyses provided by forward thinking PR and interactive agencies.

“I have found Twitalyzer, especially this new version to be an invaluable resource for anyone working in social media” Said Warren Sukernek, VP of Strategy at Lift9 (@WarrenSS). “It is an extremely robust analytics platform that cannot only help you to identify influencers, but also review their associated networks and connections. Twitalyzer provides the depth and flexibility in Twitter analytics that you wish came with your social media monitoring tool. In fact, I think it may be the best application for listening to Twitter.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Twitalyzer is a free service available at http://twitalzyer.com. For more information about the service contact Eric T. Peterson ([email protected], @erictpeterson) at 503-282-2601 or Jeff Katz ([email protected], @katzpdx) at 503-805-6901.

You can learn more about TweetMeme’s Follow Button at http://tweetmeme.com/about/follow_button and learn how to install the application on your own blog or web site at http://help.tweetmeme.com/2010/02/23/follow-button-wordpress-plugin/

We wanted to take a second to note that Ed (@znmeb) and Dan (@sunsblogger) won our first Twitalyzer Community contest to tag social media experts, celebrities, and politicians. Congratulations to both guys who will shortly see their faces in rotation on the “Featured Users” widgets throughout the web site.

While Ed, Dan, Carri, and a host of other folks tagged like crazy we didn’t get the critical mass we’d hoped, especially among politicians and celebrities. Perhaps a better strategy is to ask you … what could we offer you to get you to tag folks in Twitalyzer? Make tagging easier? More intuitive? Better prizes? Cash money? What do you think?

If you have ideas and suggestions please Tweet us directly and let us know. Thanks!

As we kick off the Twitalyzer Community idea we wanted to see if we could get your collective help with something!

We’d really like to start getting more people tagged in Twitalyzer. Tagging makes the application amazingly more powerful and useful, but we have not done a good job clarifying the how’s and why’s of tagging. While we work that out, we want to have a contest!

The contest is to see who can add the tags “Social_Media_Expert”, “Politician”, and “Celebrity” to the greatest number of Twitter users in our system. All you need to do to add the tags is Twitalyze someone you know to be in one of those three categories, click any of the “Tag” buttons on their profile, and add the text. For example:

The only real requirement is that, you know, the person you’re tagging is a social media expert, politician, or celebrity. We’ll let you be the judge, but we will also spot check your work and disallow/remove inappropriate entries so don’t be that guy, okay? To keep track of who is doing the most tagging we’ve created this uber-cool Top 25 Twitalyzer Tracker list that you can segment by geographic location or tag applied. Check out the early results for all three categories:

1. Twitalyzer Tag “Social_Media_Expert”
2. Twitalyzer Tag “Politician”
3. Twitalyzer Tag “Celebrity“

The prize for the “top tagger” in each category on February 1, 2010 will be a free month in the “Featured User” slot all throughout Twitalyzer (a $100 USD value!!!) That and the warm feeling you’ll get when you go to bed knowing you did something really awesome for the Twitalyzer Community. Go forth and tag, Twitalyzers!

One thing that Jeff and I have discovered since releasing Twitalyzer 2.0 is that some of our users are really, really passionate about, well, Twitalyzing people. We think this is totally, totally awesome, and we have been brainstorming on ways to both recognize the fantastic work many of you are doing on our behalf and, if people are willing, apply crowd-sourcing techniques to help improve Twitalyzer.

The best idea we’ve had so far is to launch this section of the site, The Twitalyzer Community pages!

Through the Twitalyzer Community pages we will do our very best to communicate our needs to you and, more importantly, give all of you a voice to ask for the features you’d like to see us develop in subsequent iterations of the application. While you all know we watch Twitter Search religiously for mentions of Twitalyzer and are always happy to get feedback via email ([email protected] or write to [email protected] or [email protected]), we wanted to set up another way for folks to offer feedback publicly. Something really, really easy.

How about just tagging your feedback with the hashtag #twitalyzer?

Doing this will let us keep an eye on your feedback using Twitalyzer Search which we think is a pretty freaking useful thing to do. Not that we’ll respond differently if you have low impact or influence … not us, we love you guys! If you have an idea, suggestion, criticism, complaint, or just want to let us know you love us too, tag your Tweet with “#twitalyzer” and we’ll be sure to get back to you ASAP!

You can even keep in touch with each other that way if you like. Who knows how it will evolve?

By very, very popular demand we just rolled out a private tagging option in Twitalyzer Tags (which you need to Sign in with Twitter to use, of course!) Now, when you go to tag a person, you’ll see a checkbox that says “Private.” When you check that box, the tag will be added to the person, and nobody but you will know!

Sneaky, huh? We don’t even send an auto-Tweet about the tagging when you’re using private tags (since that would kind of defeat the purpose, right?)

Like we said, we applied this “marketer” tag to our pal @kaykas and when you go to his profile that tag will simply not appear, at least not as associated with us! But, when you go to your Twitalyzer Dashboard > Tagged report you will see this “marketer” tag followed by an asterisk (“*”) telling you the tag is “private” and you’ll be able to track all the folks you’ve labeled as such!

Brilliant, huh? Even better is that you can use the Twitalyzer Dashboard > Segments tool to apply “private” tags en masse now simply by clicking that same “Private” checkbox:

And there you have it! We welcome your feedback on this feature and please let us know if you find any bugs or glitches.