NewsWhip opens up its history to show the social lives of stories

NewsWhip tracks how stories spread on social media, a critical factor for publishers these days.

To give publishers and others more insight into what content most engages readers, the Dublin, Ireland-based company has now opened up its archives for searches.

Called NewsWhip Analytics, this beta version covers the content that NewsWhip has tracked since January of 2014 through its real-time Spike platform.

The database, which CEO and co-founder Paul Quigley described in a blog post as “the biggest repository of human story engagement ever created,” shows several metrics relating to user engagement. You can find, for example, the time of year when a particular seasonal topic (say, “iced coffee”) starts being liked and shared.

Another use case, Quigley said, might be an advertiser, publisher or manufacturer interested in following the social arc of stories about electric car maker Tesla.

An announcement in October of last year for Tesla’s new solar roofs boosted engagement, for instance, but the Tesla stories with the biggest user responses combined the topics of clean solar energy with ways that those solar roofs could help save money for drivers.

NewsWhip head of communications Liam Corcoran told me that his company’s searches of how content makes it way through social media work differently from other social listening and analytics platforms because they are site-based.

So, for instance, the NewsWhip archive covers what happens to stories on the New York Times website and how they are shared around social media, rather than focusing on what Facebook is talking about. A search for electric cars might bring up stories on those topics on the Times and other sites, and then provide graphs showing their social life cycles.

He noted that Viacom, the Associated Press and The Washington Post are using NewsWhip to see the social sharing and liking of particular topics, specific approaches to those topics, and other factors, in order to discover how they might improve their engagement with users.

[Article on MarTech Today.]

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.