Tuesday, May 22, 2012

New feature: Use the Google Chrome address bar to search in SocialBro

Due to the coming changes Twitter will make in its API, we’ve updated SocialBro. The main change you’ll notice is that now you can use the address bar (omnibox) of Google Chrome to make searches in our app, which means you take less time to find Twitter users and to see search results at a glance.


We’ve done a little video tutorial to show you how to use the new feature, only available for our Chrome version users.



If you’re an Adobe Air user, you also have to update the app. Please visit our download page and click on “Download” in “SocialBro for Desktop”. Before doing that, we strongly recommend you export your SocialBro account history, to avoid losing this data while updating the tool. See how to do that here. Please get in touch if you have any queries.

If you use SocialBro for Chrome, the app will update automatically during the following 24 hours, but if you can't wait, update it manually.

Remember to visit our feedback page to suggest new features and to browse our user guide for how-to articles and other tips.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

New Features: Export HootSuite Schedule From SocialBro & Get the Best Time Tweet From a Custom Sample of Users

Do you use HootSuite to batch schedule your tweets? If so, you’ll love this release. We’re happy to provide a new round of features for your SocialBro dashboard. The most important one is that now you can export your optimal tweet schedule from SocialBro to HootSuite in order to expose your tweets to the maximum audience!


“The method of message scheduling is especially powerful for agencies and marketing departments managing complex campaigns”, emphasized HootSuite on its blog when they released this feature. Now, you, as a HootSuite fan, have another reason to use it: your message will be delivered when you have most followers online.

As you do when you batch schedule your tweets with HootSuite, you have to pre-create a batch of up to 50 updates in a text file or spreadsheet. You can also write the tweets directly in SocialBro, but we recommend you still do this in an appropriate text editor. In this file, include the text and the link. Here is the big difference if you do this through SocialBro: you don’t need to include the delivery times because SocialBro caculates them for you!

From our “Best time to tweet” report, we’ve implemented an algorithm that optimally schedules the tweets in HootSuite more efficiently, so reaching the highest number of followers. You just have to select the days of the week you want to tweet, how many tweets per day and the minimum interval between each tweet, and paste the tweets previously created.


We’ve prepared a tutorial on this new feature to show you how to do this step by step. So, have a look at this post on our user guide to understand this new function.

From a Custom Sample of Users Get the Best Time Tweet

Another new feature, requested by many of you, is the possibility of applying the “Best Time to Tweet” to a custom sample of users. Now, you can get the report for any search, list, 3rd party Twitter account, etc. We’re pleased to offer you a different way to take advantage of the “Best Time Tweet” report, one of our highlight features.

Have a look at our user guide to see how to get the “Best Time to Tweet” for a custom sample of users.


“Add All to List” with one click


Now you can add multiple users to a list with one click! From any search, just click on the arrow on the bottom navigation bar, then click “Add all to list”. All the users will be added to the list. Remember that Twitter allows 20 lists per user with 500 users in each list.

On our user guide, you can see how to do this.




Two New Filters for the Advanced Syntax


If you’re a SocialBro power user, we’re sure you have tried the Advanced Syntax at least once to refine your searches using different criteria. If you haven’t, we recommend you read this post to dig deeper into this fantastic feature.

In this new version, we’ve added two filters: by language and by time zone. There is nothing new if you search for only one language, because there is already a filter for this. However if you want to combine different languages in a search this new possibility is awesome.

Would you like to know which of your followers have twitter.com configured in English and in Spanish? In the search box, in the top navigation bar, write “lang:en + lang:es”. For the languages, you must use the “ISO 2 Letter Language Codes”: 'es':'Spanish','de':'German','ja':'Japanese','ko':'Korean','tr':'Turkish','pt':'Portuguese',
'ru':'Russian','en':'English','it':'Italian','fr':'French','id':'Indonesian','nl':'Dutch'.

To search by different time zones, use the same rule: “timezone:madrid + timezone:london”.

>> The app will update during the following 24 hours, but if you don’t want to wait see how to update SocialBro manually if you use SocialBro for Chrome. If you use the Adobe Air version, you can update it manually through this link.

Remember to visit our feedback page to suggest new features and to browse our user guide for how-to articles and other tips. Also follow @SocialBro for handy tips and quick answers via Twitter. We’re thrilled to help you with any queries you may have!

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Peerindex CEO Azeem Azhar answers some questions about its score

A blog post written by Azeem Azhar (@azeem), Founder of PeerIndex

Last week we asked you what you’d like to know about PeerIndex and if you’d started using the service and needed anything explained.

PeerIndex measures your status and reputation across the social web. The social ranking service that won The Grand Prix award at this year's Europas offers insights for social media users and brands about topic communities and influencers. Your reputation (or ‘social capital’) is calculated by looking at various factors including how your ideas and opinions spread, how other people interact with you, how interesting other people find your content, and the quality of your engaged network.

Most importantly PeerIndex looks at how authoritative and interesting other people think you are, as well as what topics and categories drive that interest. Our algorithm values people who produce fresh content, which is valued by their friends and contacts online, and is then spread beyond that initial network.

We are mapping out the social web, allowing you to discover new information on people, places and specific topics. We track whose content you are most likely to share, and who is most likely to share your, to analyse your resonance.

We have taken a simple concept of figuring out who was the best source of a particular topic (e.g., who do you listen to to learn about?) and migrated the insights into an algorithm that focuses on understanding how you impact the social web with your conversations. Rather than listening from a single point of view, we watch how you converse with others and the ripples you create. From those ripples, you can see how people respond and react to you - getting a better understanding of your influence.

Another thing to bear in mind is that our influence formula is a rolling analysis run over 120 days, this is a sliding window that goes backwards from the date of calculation. This period of four months is long enough to make sure authority grows and remains consistent, while being short enough to ensure you remain active.

The vital stats section on your page shows your Twitter statistics from the data we have sampled. We won’t access all of your data and have a 3,20
0 tweet limitation, which’s set by Twitter.


Here are some of the questions that you asked us:

What is the influence formula?

How does PeerIndex distinguish itself from other influence measurements?


Specifically we measure authority within topics and aggregate this in-topic authority up to provide a single PeerIndex (the number in they yellow box).

Within a topic (such as Venture Capital or Parenting and Children) we measure your centrality in a graph which has other people active in that topic as nodes and various interactions as edges (with different weights).

Your centrality is given a score. We look at other features extracted from your behaviour, including (but not-limited to) your tweet rate, your mention rate, who RTs you, how many people RT you, and so on. We put your centrality score (together with your other features) into the PeerIndex model and that provides a raw score. This raw score is then transformed in a number from 1 to 100. To work out the overall PeerIndex we aggregate your topic PeerIndex across a range of broad topics.

We strongly take into consideration the nature of the content you share and the quality of people who interact with you - using the simple rules of thumb like 'birds of a feather flock together' and that frequent interactions with other high authority individuals is worth more than a large volume of teenage chatter.

Why do topics appear that I don’t really talk about on my profile?

We use semantic analysis and machine algorithms to analyse your messages and the URLs you share. Links and URLs are particularly strong signals - and they often including many different topics.

Our topic hierarchy is very broad - and we endeavour to create topics which reflect real communities. This means you may flag ‘multiple topics’ - for example, if you shared a link about Bribery in Football; it might activate topics around ‘Football’, ‘World Cup’ and ‘Bribery & corruption’.

You need to be quite active in a topic for us to recognise you as being ‘interested in it’.
If we have selected the wrong topics, you can personal your topics through your personal dashboard.

What does the formula value?

We value how other people respond to you, not how you respond to other people. The most important thing is to get a range of people to regularly interact with you (RT you, share your posts, reply).

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Real-time analytics for Twitter now in SocialBro

Today we’re releasing a version that we’re sure will surprise you. After our integration with Bufferapp, announced three weeks ago, we are here to give you more powerful analytics! Check out the video below to get an idea about this amazing new feature:



As you can see SocialBro now has real-time analytics for your Twitter community! You can visualize in real-time:

  • Who is currently on-line
  • The total number of followers of the on-line users
  • Number of on-line users per second
  • The top languages of these users
  • The apps and clients most used

How can real-time analytics be useful for you?

You can learn about the real-time state of your community at a glance, identify users who are online and interact with them.
  • Language chart: If you have a multi-language Twitter account, this feature helps you identify the best language to tweet in at any given time.
  • Apps chart: you can get an idea of ​​how active your community is in real-time. If they are mostly tweeting from apps like Foursquare or Instagram, for example, they probably are not aware of their timelines in that moment.
  • Monitoring list: With the lists, you can monitor a specific group of users applying the previously mentioned points.
  • You also can monitor a hashtag or a key word using the previous points to get an idea of how active they are.
To start enjoying the new feature, just click on the “Real-time analytics” icon on your SocialBro dashboard.

In this current free version of our tool, you can only monitor up to 100 active users every 10 seconds.

If you use SocialBro for Chrome, the app will update automatically (see how to update SocialBro manually). However, if you use the Adobe Air version, just click on Download in SocialBro for Desktop.

We hope that you like this new version as much as we do! We’d love to know your comments and to help you with any queries you may have!

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Optimize your tweet reach with Buffer and SocialBro

After our integration with PeerIndex, announced two weeks ago, here we are to launch a new version of SocialBro that will let you “be awesome on Social Media”. From now, you’ll be able to configure the Best Time to Tweet tool in order to “Buffer” your tweets more efficiently and to expose them to the maximum audience.


What is Buffer?

Buffer is an amazing tool that allows you to schedule the content you find online and add it to your Twitter stream (it also works on Facebook). The app publishes the tweets according to the times you choose and, as we can read on its site, “with Buffer, we do the scheduling and let you focus on the sharing!”.


With this new feature, now you will be able to configure the times for scheduling your tweets via Buffer with the help of our Best Time to Tweet report! SocialBro calculates your best times to tweet during the week, helping you spread your content at the times you have more followers online. Isn't it fantastic!

Understanding the new feature

SocialBro generates the Best Time to Tweet report by analyzing the timeline of each of your followers to discover when they are usually online during the week. With this information, we’ve implemented an algorithm that optimally schedules the tweets in the Buffer app.

You just have to select how many tweets per day you want to send and the intervals between each tweet. With this data, SocialBro automatically configures the optimal times in order to reach the most followers.

"SocialBro is already one of the most useful apps out there. I believe that combining SocialBro with Buffer creates an incredibly powerful combination. Let SocialBro do the work to find the best times to reach your followers and then let Buffer do the work to send it out at these times. It's like a marriage made in heaven, and one that will get your retweets, clicks and influence score through the roof, I am sure!", says Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer.

Step by step

As you've seen in the video, the first thing to do is to sign up in Buffer (if you don’t yet have a Buffer account), then click on the Best Time to Tweet report in SocialBro. The tool is on the dashboard.


It takes about two hours for the report to be generated, so after getting the e-mail we will send you, run SocialBro and click on the Best Time to Tweet icon again. In the first chart (“When are your followers online?”), you’ll see the “Config Buffer schedule” option.



After clicking on this, you’ll see this dialogue box:


You just have to select the days of the week you want to tweet, how many tweets per day and the minimum interval between each tweet. As we’ve said, after that SocialBro automatically configures the optimal times for your tweets. Once you have done this, you’ll see in your settings in Buffer the times selected through SocialBro.

We recommend you configure each week your Buffer with the Best Time to Tweet from SocialBro, because users’ behaviour changes and communities grow.

We hope that you love this new feature as much as we do! We’re thrilled to help you with any doubts you may have!

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Why we recommend you migrate to SocialBro for Chrome

[la versión en español se encuentra a continuación]

This week you may notice the warning we’ve added when you open our Adobe Air version, in which we strongly recommend you to migrate to SocialBro for Chrome. We’d like to explain the reasons why we decided to do this.

SocialBro was born in Adobe Air, a platform that allowed us to access all major operating systems (Mac OS, Linux and Windows) without extra effort. Since the first update we released, we sporadically started receiving complaints from users that had been stuck at the step of adding a Twitter account. The common factor was that they had just finished updating SocialBro.

The solution we found (and we’ve documented it in our knowledge base) is to remove the local data of Adobe Air. Although this process effectively solves the problem, it requires advanced technical knowledge and results in you losing your synchronization history.

After several months of releases and the collaboration of many of you, who have allowed us access to your computer to find the causes, we have confirmed that the bug is from Adobe Air.

This bug has been reported and documented in the official Adobe forum since February 2011, and we have read similar complaints from users of other Adobe Air apps (such as TweetDeck). For its part, Adobe Air recognizes the problem although they haven’t been able to reproduce it, which means that they have stopped paying attention to the problem.

From SocialBro, we are doing everything possible for Adobe to reopen the case, to provide you a reliable service on this platform.

That’s why, until this bug is fixed, we recommend you migrate to the Chrome app, if you value your account history and your local data. Here you can see how to export your history to SocialBro for Chrome.

As always, get in touch via Twitter (@SocialBro) if you have any doubt. We are more than happy to help you!

Install SocialBro for Chrome


[Spanish version]
Por qué recomendamos que migres a SocialBro para Chrome

Esta semana habréis notado que al abrir nuestra versión de Adobe Air aparecía un aviso en el que os recomendábamos que migraseis a SocialBro para Chrome. Nos gustaría explicaros las razones por las que hemos decidido haceros esta recomendación.

SocialBro nació en Adobe Air, plataforma que nos ha permitido acceder a los principales sistemas operativos (Mac Os, Linux y Windows) sin necesidad de un esfuerzo adicional. Desde las primeras actualizaciones que lanzamos, comenzamos a recibir esporádicamente quejas de usuarios que se quedaban atascados en el paso de añadir una cuenta de Twitter. El factor común era que habían acabado de actualizar SocialBro.

La solución que encontramos y documentamos en nuestra base de conocimientos es eliminar los datos locales de Adobe Air. Aunque este proceso efectivamente soluciona el problema, requiere conocimientos técnicos avanzados y tiene como consecuencia que perdáis vuestro historial de sincronizaciones.

Después de varios meses de lanzamientos y la colaboración de muchos de vosotros, que nos han permitido acceder a vuestros ordenadores para encontrar las causas, hemos confirmado que se trata de un bug de Adobe Air.

Este bug está reportado y documentado en el foro oficial de Adobe desde febrero del 2011, y hemos leído quejas similares de usuarios de otras apps de Adobe Air (ej. TweetDeck). Por su parte Adobe Air si bien reconoce el problema no lo ha logrado reproducir, con lo cual ha dejado de prestarle atención.

Desde SocialBro estamos haciendo todo lo posible para que Adobe reabra al caso y podamos brindaros fiabilidad sobre esta plataforma.

Mientras no se solucione este bug, desde SocialBro recomendamos que si valoráis vuestro historial y datos locales de SocialBro, uséis la versión de Chrome. Aquí os comentamos como exportar vuestro historial hacia Chrome.

Si tenéis alguna duda, ya sabéis, nos podéis contactar vía Twitter (@SocialBro). ¡Estamos encantados de ayudaros!

Instala SocialBro para Chrome

Monday, December 12, 2011

SocialBro integrates the PeerIndex Score as a new criteria to manage and analyze your Twitter community

We’re really happy to announce today our partnership with PeerIndex, the influence standard that identifies, ranks and scores people and brands in the Social Media. In this new version, you’ll be able to sort and filter your Twitter community through the PeerIndex Score which is much more consistent than the criteria of the number of followers.

"SocialBro is one of the most dynamic and powerful ways to manage your Twitter community. We are really impressed by the way SocialBro displays the barriers between a user and their community, and helps users understand how to overcome these obstacles. We are excited by how they are using our data to give more detailed information on online communities and the way they work", says PeerIndex’s CEO and founder, Azeem Azhar.

To start managing your community with the PeerIndex score, you just have to synchronize the influence data, by clicking on the new icon you’ll see in the tool menu, on the dashboard.


Then, you’ll notice that every user will have a small number inside their avatar. This number reflects the PeerIndex score that each profile has in the social networks. You’ll be able to order your community by the influence data (by clicking on “Influence” in the interface footer).


Influence indicators evolution

On the dashboard you’ll see a new chart with the influence indicators evolution, where you’ll find the growth of your own PeerIndex, in addition to the evolution of your “Activity”, “Authority” and “Audience” scores.


Understanding the PeerIndex Score

As PeerIndex explains:

“Your overall PeerIndex score is a relative measure of your online authority. The PeerIndex Score reflects the impact of your online activities, and the extent to which you have built up social and reputational capital on the web.

At its heart, PeerIndex addresses the fact that merely being popular (or having gamed the system) doesn't indicate authority. Instead, we build up your Authority fingerprint on a topic-by-topic level using our eight benchmark topics.

Someone, however, cannot be an authority without a receptive audience. A receptive audience is one that listens and is receptive to the discussions of members of the community. To capture this aspect, the PeerIndex Score includes an Audience score we calculate for each profile.

Finally, we include an Activity score to account for an individual who is active and has a greater share of attention of people interested in the topics that they are interested in”.

New bar chart

In the Insights of your community, you’ll notice a new bar chart “Users by Influence Rank” (after the “Users by location” map) that allows you to visualize at which level your community is in terms of their PeerIndex Score.

If you use SocialBro for Chrome, the app will update automatically (see how to update SocialBro manually). However, if you use the Adobe Air version, just click on “Download” in “SocialBro for Desktop”.

As always, we really care about your feedback! So, keep in touch if you have any queries!