TwitterSheep is a simple service that takes a Twitter username and generates a tag cloud based on the biographies of that user’s followers. This is quite superficial, since a Twitter bio is limited to 140 characters. It would be more comprehensive if it generated the tag cloud based on your follower’s actual Tweets (similar to the way that TweetCloud works for single users) but I expect the limiting factor here is bandwidth and processing time on their server. However, I thought it might be able to give you a useful insight or two so I had a little play with it…
Here’s the tag cloud for the NixonMcInnes Twitter feed. Social media, web, digital, PR and marketing are all big tags which seems about right.
But what about the uses for this for brands on Twitter? I can see this being useful to brands who want to know more about their customer’s interests (surely all of them?) I had a quick look at the Twitter accounts used by a couple of NixonMcInnes clients to see what their tag clouds looked like. First up, JP from O2 – a Twitter account to help customers.
It actually looks very similar to NixonMcInnes’ followers. Perhaps this shows that the account is of more interest to the social media and PR industry folks than it is to O2 customers. Or it could be that in spite of Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry, Twitter is still quite a niche, early adopter crowd. Or perhaps O2 customers don’t follow the account back, even if it has helped them.
Next I looked at the tag cloud for followers of WWF’s Earth Hour Twitter feed:
Again, we see some familiar big tags, but also some other prominent keywords like ‘world’ and ‘green.’ Not surprising given the nature of Earth Hour, but perhaps this shows that many Earth Hour followers aren’t just casual supporters of the cause if they mention these words in their biography.
I’m curious about other uses of these kinds of tools for brands. Fire away in the comments if you have ideas.
