The following interactive chart monitors the followers of @justinbieber, @ladygaga and @MDNA every 5 minutes

Interactivity:

• Moving the mouse over the graph you can see the date and the legends values.
• Zoom: press the left mouse button and drag.
• Reset zoom: double click

Thanks to a suggestion by Alberto Rodriguez (aka @almirot), I’m monitoring the growth of @MDNA’s followers. He is a founding partner of Smetrica, a great free tool that measures Facebook pages (6,000 so far). We were contacted by Montse Fernandez (aka @monsefc),a PhD student like me and fan of the Smetrica app.

Alberto suggested that I follow the evolution of recent Madonna’s twitter account thinking it could have a huge growth similar to @Murdoch’s account. In order to have a reference with other celebrities on Twitter I’m also monitoring @justinbieber and @ladygaga. The result was very disappointing; the growth of Madonna’s account has not been spectacular and is far from top users of Twitter.

This morning Alberto sent me an email noting the unusual follower’s fluctuations of @ladygaga and @justinbieber since April 3. I do not know what could have happened: fans are crazy or a bot is removing followers or Twitter API does not work properly.

The following image shows the zoom of a fluctuations area and as you can see the unfollowers appear exactly every hour, in the case of @ladygaga at half-past and in @justinbieber five to.

What do you think is happening?

Updated 2011-01-10 : experiment stopped on 2012-01-10 at 15:30, due to low growth of followers

For a while now I have been thinking about displaying experiments dynamically. Thanks to a suggestion from Alfonso Romay on Twitter, I decided to take that step:

@congosto ¿Merece la pena hacer un análisis comparativo de crecimiento rápido en cuentas de Twitter? La de @rupertmurdoch es espectacular.

— Alfonso Romay (@AlfonsoRomay) January 2, 2012

The result has been some interactive graphs to show Rupert Murdoch’s followers growth on Twitter every five minutes

• The first graph shows the cumulative followers to the present time
• The second shows the followers per unit of time. The smaller unit is a minute. The graph allows a zoom from 1 minute to a year. If you move your mouse over, the number of followers with the date and time shown in the upper right corner

Both graphs are made with Google visualization API.
Note: On January 3, from 20 to 22 there isn’t any measure by time unit due to a mistake copying files.

The year 2011 was an important year for users who share experiences, preferences and opinions in this endless river that is Twitter. How many information streaming flows that we were not able to read!?
In 2011 I rescued the tweets of the most significant moments of the year before flowing into the sea of forgetfulness and I wanted to make a timeline that sheds light to the attention we gave to different events.

Publications Timeline

Spanish people paid much more attention to football than politics, although it should be noted that the Champions League is an international event.

Timeline of users

We have seen several users attention peak for an event: 500,000 for football, 160,000 for politics and 65,000 for mobilization

Rescued tweet

I have rescued from oblivion a handful of tweets that were most often mentioned during the events of 2011

• Ley Sinde

No accesible en Twitter, recogido en Favstarr’s

Pásalo. Publícalo: Un Gobierno en funciones no puede aprobar hoy la ‘Ley Sinde’.bit.ly/uI892R

— Luis Alfonso Gámez (@lagamez) December 2, 2011

• 15M

Zapatero a Sinde: “Mierda Ángeles. Con lo tranquilos que los teníamos descargándose cosas” #acampadasol

— Lucía Taboada (@TaboadaLucia) May 18, 2011

Tantos años reprochando a los jóvenes su ‘pasotismo’ y cuando reaccionan también se les reprocha. Un poco de coherencia..#15m #acamapadasol

— Jesús Maraña (@jesusmarana) May 18, 2011

• 15O

Hace 5meses empezamos a soñar. Hoy despertamos y vemos que el sueño es global. Casi 1000 ciudades. ¡No te quedes en casa! #live15O #vive15O

— Democracia real YA! (@democraciareal) October 15, 2011

• 7-N Debate Rubalcaba-Rajoy
  

Rajoy ha mirado 585 veces sus papeles frente a las 48 de Rubalcaba #Rubalcabavenceyconvence

— _Rubalcaba_ (@_Rubalcaba_) November 7, 2011

Qué mala suerte hemos tenido. 8 años en el Gobierno y se le ocurren ahora todas las ideas.

— Mariano Rajoy Brey (@marianorajoy) November 7, 2011

Debate muy edificante. Rajoy fomentando la lectura, Rubalcaba la logopedia.

— Risto Mejide (@ristomejide) November 7, 2011

• 20N

Espero que Rajoy no recorte en twitter, que como nos dejen con 130 caracteres no respondo de mis actos.

— Alberto Romero (@AlberZeal) November 20, 2011

Lanzamos el hashtag #1persona1voto. Si se convierte en TT. Habrá movilización! #ordago15M

— Democracia real YA! (@democraciareal) November 21, 2011

• Madrid-Barça (último clásico)

Mou y yo tenemos sólo una cosa en común: a los dos nos gustaría ser tan grandes como Guardiola. #HalaMadrid uy no, espera, #forçaBarça

— Risto Mejide (@ristomejide) December 10, 2011

Christmas comes to Barriblog just like every year. From here I would like to wish you Merry Christmas with all my heart. Although the times we are living in do not look very prosperous, I think that  imagination, work, collaboration and an open mind will allow us to carry on and achieve great things.