Over the AFL Grand Final weekend we were pretty busy doing a Twitter data visualisation for an article by the Herald Sun but there's so much more in this data set that we decided to write a follow-up post as well.

Have a look at the below video or the interactive Tableau dashboard behind it, showing volume of Twitter mentions for the different AFL teams over a period of time leading up to the Grand Final. Further down are some screenshots of the Ross Lyon (St Kilda coach) incident, in which he was accused of stabbing his predecessor Mark Harvey in the back for the position of coach at the Freemantle club - the whole story was actively discussed on Twitter as you can see.

The video (and dashboard) present what we call 'Twitter Time', all Tweets broken up into chunks of 400 and then analysed. As the chunks of Tweets (blue lines) are visualised, time will slow down at moments when the volume of Tweets was high, particularly at match dates (green circles) or at the Grand Final (dark green circle). The jersey size is proportional to the number of Tweets mentioning a particular team, and you'll notice that they go gray once they are eliminated from the series. The analysis was run on about 35,000 Tweets provided by Alterian's SM2 social media analytics platform.

Below is the breakdown of the Twitter chatter and mentions of key players, and most importantly coaches, from the time Ross Lyon announced that he was resigning and rumours started about his move to Freemantle (15th and 16th September). All Tweets were analysed for instances of player or coach names. Rumours pop up and die as Twitter volume rises and falls.

Above: Hawthorn vs Sydney & West Coast vs Carlton normal match chatter on Twitter.

Above: rumours of Ross Lyon's move to Freemantle and sacking of Mark Harvey explode on Twitter after Ross Lyon officially resigns. His move to Freemantle is confirmed on the 16th of September.

Above: Neil Craig becomes the topic of conversation as well as it is rumoured he might go to St. Kilda.

Above: AFL fans move on and resume normal match chatter ...

Partnered with Alterian using their business intelligence product SM2 to extract all the information on each Tweet, a database of all word pairs was created (over a million!). The word pairs, like 'asylum seekers' or 'boat people', were generated from each Tweet independently and then tallied up over all Tweets. Common words like 'the' and 'it' were removed, and a stemming algorithm was used to group words such as 'Australia', 'Australian', or 'Australia's' together. All Tweets were treated equal and all Retweets were included so that the content of the most popular and followed people on Twitter would emerge via Retweets.

Once the top word pairs (based on a tally) were finalised an open source software called Gephi, which is a powerful tool for visualising and analysing large networks, was used to present the data. See below for our first attempt; each word is connected to the words that were paired with it, taken from the the top word pairs. The size of the words is related to how many other words are connected to it (not how mant times the word pair appeared in all Tweets).

The whole network is below and shows how the different words are associated. The word 'Raquel' is at the centre (and is the largest) because it was associated with the most words. Many interesting word associations come out of the data. For example, there is a sub-network with words 'live', 'exports', and 'corners' (top left) most probably comparing the SBS Go Back series to the Four Corners program that exposed the live exports trade.

One thing that you might notice is that there are pockets of networks that are associated with a particular Tweet that was Retweeted a lot. For example the Tweet below is associated with the sub-network (bottom middle) that contains words such as 'no', 'vote', 'mad', 'point', and 'court'. You can search Google with any combination of associated words along with the word 'gobacksbs' to find the Tweets that made up the data.

If you are an experienced analyst with a solid statistical background and at least 4 to 5 years of work experience with complex data sets (preferably in marketing related roles but not necessarily) who is ready to step up and manage his own small team of analysts in a fast paced agency environment then you should apply. 

+ Keen interest in all things web analytics and online optimisation

+ Basic understanding of marketing principles provides a head start
+ Entrepreneurial spirit, business or marketing degree would be good 

+ Proven ability to turn data into insights and actionable recommendations

+ Ability to visualise and confidently present insights to key stakeholders

+ Ability to identify client opportunities and turn them into project proposals

+ Ability to develop and manage successful client and partner relationships

+ Ability to manage smaller teams and complex projects a great advantage

+ Experience with business intelligence tools apart from Excel expected

+ Experience in dashboard design and development would be beneficial

+ Experience with either Tableau or Spotfire software would be fantastic

+ Experience with advanced statistical analysis and software expected 

+ Experience with Omniture and Google Analytics would be useful
+ Basic understanding of PHP or MySQL would come in handy
+ Flexibility, lateral thinking and attention to detail are crucial
+ Ability to respond to client deadlines when necessary
+ Advanced Excel, Word and PowerPoint skills essential

+ Exposure to a growing list of interesting blue chip clients

+ Highly flexible working hours in a dynamic team environment
+ Young start-up with a "work hard, play hard" company attitude
+ Training on industry leading analytics and marketing platforms
+ Freedom to experiment with emerging technologies and new tools

+ Potential for public speaking engagements to build personal profile 
+ Potential for a wider regional APAC role in the not to distant future

+ Attractive salary package plus performance based bonus and perks

If the above sounds interesting, please email us at jobs@datalicious.com so we can have a look at your resume and arrange a quick initial phone interview to ask you a few questions before we meet for a proper interview.

You might have heard the recent buzz about Tableau, but are wondering how to get hold of a copy for your business and whether the platform is supported in Australia?

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In case you're not fully convinced yet, read Gartner's recent BI tool comparison and some of the feedback including "customer survey data shows that Tableau was chosen more often for functionality than any other vendor in the survey, with one of the highest overall product functionality scores."

View the Tableau product tour or visit the official product pages to get more information and detailed technical specifications.

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