There are books that one forgets easily, almost immediately after having read them. Others leave behind a small memory of a landscape, character or situation. But there are very few that immediately leave us with a feeling of intimacy so strong that we feel as if they are our own work; books that leave behind a stamp of brilliance. This was what I felt after reading the book “On Heroes and Tombs” by Ernesto Sábato.

The characters of “On Heroes and Tombs”  go through life with a sort of tragic romanticism. Love is the motor driving all the successes that unfold in a complex stage of life in which the reality that surrounds the characters begins to transform itself, giving rise to the utopias that will prevail. This is an internal battle of desires that often takes place outside of that which is permitted by reality. And it speaks to the merit of this work of literature that like myself, so many people have identified with some of it’s characters, with their thoughts, worries, feelings, or simply have enjoyed the pleasure of reading the stories of these characters intertwined with the history of a country.

My interest in this work of literature lead me to look into the author and to continue to read his other books. This is marvelous literature by an author committed to ethics and the dignity of the human being.

Ernesto Sábato is one of the most important Latin American writers, and I speak in the present because the work of this artist and his name will endure, even though this past Saturday (30/04/2011) he passed away at the age of 99.

The news spread throughout the media, and people quickly began to mention his name on the web. Let’s take a look at what happened on this day when Sábato’s name was mentioned.

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On the 17^th of April, BAFICI (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente) came to an end, with around 300 000 people enjoying a festival that 13 years ago was regarded as being only of interest to a minority of cult film lovers and as the festival for quirky cinephiles, clad in designer black-framed glasses and vintage (which still remains the fashion). But the large number of people in attendance has demonstrated that what was missing was a space to screen those productions of the 7^th art that don’t make it to commercial cinemas and that previously could only be viewed in small movie clubs.

Why not listen to what this group of people think, how they express themselves and what topics they’re talking about on the web in relation to BAFICI?

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On Monday April the 11^th, 2011, the second edition of Social Media Mondays took place in Buenos Aires, where Tomás Sawada of Intellignos presented the results of a study the company carried out on Twitter and Facebook use in Latin America.

Here we leave you with some of the charts that resulted from the research:

Spheres in which Twitter and Facebook are used

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Based on Socialmetrix’s political monitoring solution, we generated the following reports on the political figures and parties related to the elections and electoral proceedings in Argentina in 2011.

During the period that was covered, February and March of 2011, 141 142 mentions were monitored, taking into account only comments made on Argentine sites (in social networks, Socialmetrix classifies different pages by country, making it possible to determine which are from Argentina and which are not).

Thanks to Claudio Regis (our idol at  Dominio Digital) and his producer for their brilliant production job, as well as to Pablo Corral and Vero Puente of Movistar, today we have the first Socialmetrix TV program.

For this first edition we have invited the leaders of the Movistar Social Media team, one of the most successful in social media, to tell us how they approached the project and what the experience was like. They also give us a couple of pointers.

Here we leave you with the video!

At Socialmetrix we have just launched “Argentina Elections 2011”, a Social Media Analytics tool oriented towards providing constant information on the opinions of Internet users on the different political candidates and parties in the running for the 2011 presidential elections.

Who is this platform for?

- Communication media to generate efficient and relevant information in real time.

- Political parties and candidates (and their press/communication agencies) to optimize communication and improve “conversation” with the public.

What kind of information can be obtained with this platform?

- The candidates most and least talked about.

- The candidates most and least favorably talked about.

- Main issues related to each candidate.

- Media that talk the most and least about each candidate and party.

- Media that talk the most and least favorably about each candidate and party.

- Main topics related to politics that people are talking about.

- Main issues related to negative comments about one or various political candidates.

- Main issues related to positive comments about one or various political candidates.

- In addition, opinions exclusively from Argentina or other countries can be filtered, making it possible to examine how different candidates are perceived from within or outside the country.

- Identify how people perceive the campaigns of the different political parties and candidates.

As well as many other possible data analyses.

For more information, call (+5411) 5984-1204 or e-mail us at sales@socialmetrix.com.

If in many countries in the region (Latin America) the term San Valentin is now used more so than El día de los enamorados, in many others the latter is primarily used. This year almost 80% of tweets (of a total of 21 896 tweets) in Spanish referred to the day as San Valentin.

Taking into consideration the period of January 16^th to February 15^th, it is also interesting to mention that more than 59% of tweets occurred on this day (San Valentin/De los enamorados), which tells us that in terms of making it a profitable one, companies have not done a good marketing job.

A while ago I mentioned a metric called Fade out that we’re using at Socialmetrix to measure the impact of a news item. This metric measures the rate at which the interest in a news item fades over time (in this case interest is measured by the numbers of tweets the item generates).

In this post we’re not going to focus on the metric itself, but rather on what information it can provide us and what insights we can obtain by analyzing the Fade-Out effect.

In the following graph, we can see the intensity of the communication on the topic, which denotes “interest” in the subject.

The sample represented in the graph above reaches a peak of 29 090 tweets. Just before it was announced that Mubarak abandoned the government, interest had fallen. In that moment the media reported the news that Mubarak was not going to abandon the presidency of his country (the green line in the graph shows the tweets related to the keyword “Mubarak not leaving” the government), at which point interest increased substantially, peaking when Mubarak abandoned the government (the yellow line in the graph represents “left”, one of the related keywords).

Once what the public was searching for had taken place, we see the rapid fall in interest among twitter users, even when there is not yet a new government in Egypt.

In this case, the Fade out effect shows that the situation of Mubarak and Egypt is a highly seasonal subject, at least for the majority of Spanish-speaking twitter users. It seems as if all of the users had said, well, that´s that, let´s move on to the next topic. . . without a doubt interesting behaviour, even more so when it´s possible to measure it.

If you like working with the latest technology on the market, researching and developing algorithms and the prospect of not working on the same web page development day in day out, read on.

A while ago I published the post ”SMXEcho mucho más que Monitoreo de Redes Sociales” where I explained, amongst other things, the effect of attraction in social networks using “Lloyd’s of London” (Lloyd’s Coffee House) as an analogy.

This time I’ll make use of a very interesting article titled “Legend” from the American Airlines magazine “American Way” to explain the effect of  “relevance” and “amplification” of a message.

The article introduces Buddy Guy, one of the best known blues musicians. Such is the extent of his influence that he has inspired Jimmi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Buddy Guy grew up in a fairly poor family with limited opportunities. With his life’s savings he left his home town (Louisiana) for Chicago where there was a large scene in the Blues Clubs. If it hadn’t been for his move to Chicago, no one would have heard of him; the decision was a vital one.

The success story begins when he arrived in Chicago and began to play. People who saw him perform in bars began to recognize his particular style and to recommend him to their friends, and in no time Buddy Guy became a notable musician, and soon thereafter, a living legend.

According to him, “. . . without clubs, where’s the next Muddy Waters or Eric Clapton gonna be heard? Without clubs, you wouldn’t be talking to me now. If I was just walkin’ down the street , you wouldn’t know I could play guitar. It was because I went into those clubs and the word-of-mouth came out that there was a new guy who could play some wild guitar.” (Buddy Guy).

I found it very interesting that someone not at all involved in technology, talking about a Blues Club, a topic which has nothing to do with technology, should provide so perfect an analogy of the effect of message amplification (as well as the relevance/importance of social networks). In fact, I would even say that if you replace “clubs” in the quote with “social networks” the meaning remains exactly the same.

Nothing new under the sun . . . except for much shorter cycles…