Who's the most social of them all?
by Rachel Clarke on May 21st, 2011Do you follow your favourite team on Twitter? What do you think of them? Are they chatty and engaging or do they use the service to push out their latest marketing message only? Now all of the teams are on Twitter, I thought it was time to examine at how social they really are.
Looking at the accounts, I decided to apply some science (or at least some maths) and rank them on some key factors:
- How many @ replies they do
- How many retweets they do
- The frequency of tweeting
So I counted the last 100 tweets of each of the teams late this afternoon, noted the replies and retweets (but did not include the replies to own team members) and looked at the date of the tweet that was 100 ago. Each got ranked and given points from 12 down to 1 for the latter 2 and double points for the replies, as this is the most important measure of socialness. So here are the results.
| Twitter Account | Replies | Retweets | -100th tweet | Score |
| @MarussiaVirgin | 41 | 1 | 19 May | 41 |
| @OfficialLRGP | 13 | 7 | 8 May | 38 |
| @MyTeamLotus | 11 | 7 | 18 May | 38 |
| @Clubforce | 16 | 3 | 6 May | 34 |
| @OfficalSF1Team | 15 | 6 | 23 Mar | 32 |
| @OfficalMGP | 2 | 1 | 10 May | 29 |
| @redbullf1spy | 2 | 1 | 24 Mar | 27 |
| @WilliamsF1 | 1 | 3 | 8 May | 26 |
| @TheFifthDriver | 1 | 6 | 21 Apr | 25 |
| @InsideFerrari | 0 | 0 | 8 May | 17 |
| @HispaniaRacing | 0 | 0 | 7 May | 15 |
| @ToroRossoSpy | 0 | 0 | 6 Nov | 10 |
So Marussia Virgin comes out as the most social team, at least in this sample. But the competition with @MyTeamLotus and @OfficialLRGP is tight, I suspect that if you took another sample, the positions may shift using this counting system. Regardless of the closeness of the results, MarussiaVirgin are by far the chattiest on the platform, with 41% of their tweets being an answer to a fan (or journalist).
At the other end of the scale, it's easy to see the teams who are using Twitter as a broadcast mechanism only. In many cases, it's useful information, eg InsideFerrari, but is it what fans want? One suggestion may be to split the pure practice/race information profile from the conversation profile if both sets of information was requested? If you could advise your favourite team(s) what would you ask for? - Let us know in the comments below!
On a side note - Here's another great example of @MarussiaVirgin's 'sociability' - a great YouTube video of Jerome out and about in Barcelona, enjoying himself at a theme park - a great way to see the actual driver having fun, rather than just the press conference chatter.
[youtube width="550" height="320"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah2touZ2-5c
Comments and Discussion
Would definitely say @marussiavirgin is on a par with @myteamlotus...
Enjoy the "formality" of Renaults tweeting. Definitely seems like a person, not a corporate entity.
Damn autocorrect, that should have read "imformallity", obviously!
Love @marussiavirgin as well as @realTimoGlock's food obsessed tweets but Team Lotus win for sheer number of people tweeting including @mikegascoyne;s pitwall tweets
. Always nice to get a reply but a retweet is probably the highest accolade. Also @H_Kovalainen has started doing impromtu Q&A sessions which are excellent. LOVE #F1 Twitter World!
@gordonw I'm pretty sure the @officiallrgp tweeter is different this weekend than previous, or if not, has been let of the leash a little, as if you look back, this weekend has been a lot more informal!
@Laura I considered including the number of other team members tweeting as part of this, but decided to focus solely on the official feed.
Fascinating read - thanks for all your hard work Rachel (must have taken you quite a while). Definitely agree @officialLRGP tweets are less formal this weekend. Different person tweeting or a change in policy? Possibly both.