“If you’re performing or simply visiting Edinburgh for funtimes this August and you think a webmaster is Spiderman, then you need to sort your life out.

It was barely a few years ago when I would go through the Fringe programme, correlate what I wanted to see into an Excel spreadsheet that I could sort by start time, end time and my own personal rating out of 5 to make sure I got the most out of the Fringe, but the geek within me doesn’t get that chance now thanks to the explosion of websites, apps and twitter giving me a minute-by-minute lowdown on what to see.

Having done 4 years worth of shows I am having a year off this year, a bit like Glastonbury, I have a fallow one in every five, but this does mean I can now go up without having really planned to see much, and crowdsource the shows to see and avoid on Twitter.

I use Twitter far too much, as an audience member I will be publishing 140 character reviews of each show I see after seeing it, I have just shy of 4000 followers including some well known faces – ohhhh get me. This means that if I see something that I like, 4000 people will know about it. If other people talk about it on Twitter to their followers, which they are likely to do, if they hash tag it so it appears on sites like this, that is an awful lot of free PR.

How can you take advantage of all that free PR. Simple? Use Twitter, there are a lot of shows I’m planning on seeing this year because I’ve heard about them on twitter from the the performer or their fans.

Last year I found myself hugely engaged with my audience via Twitter. Getting an instant reaction to a show is a wonderfully satisfying, if not mentally disturbing thing. The important this is not to just promote your show, but to chat to people, reply, offering insight, offer entertainment, offer interest. Something as stupid as me complaining about the lack of crackers for cheese in the shop by my flat, saw someone bring me a pack to my show, which meant not only did I sell a show ticket but I also got a free pack of crackers.

If you’re interesting enough people will care about what you’re saying, how your shows are going and hopefully come along. It’s not a one way street, interact, offer your own advice, tell some funnies.

It’s all straight forward, be a nice person, use twitter, talk about what you’re going through, it’s good therapy at the very least, but hopefully a twitter buzz will start to generate and people will see your show because of it.

Don’t go thinking you can get away without flyering though.”

Thanks Chris, you’re spot on about Twitter, it’s a game-changer and hugely useful tool for acts at the Fringe.

In EdTwinge’s not-so-humble opinion; an act that says it doesn’t do Twitter is like an act that says it don’t do group sex.

A lifestyle choice yes, and not compulsory, but both unthinkable in this day and age.

Tweet This Post

The same issue was raised in rather more direct fashion when our mate Sal sent us the message below…

Sort your "Carr"ma out

“Noise” is the operative word when it comes to acts like Jimmy Carr. He has just shy of 200,000 followers who are (with some justification) hanging on his every word and waiting for the next opportunity to interact with him. That interaction generates an awful lot of noise. Set up a Twitter search for @jimmycarr and just watch those tweets come rolling in.

EdTwinge measures noise. But it has to be relevant noise. Noise that is relevant to the Fringe. Noise that gives an indication of “happeningness” around an act at the Fringe.

The easiest way to determine which noise is relevant is via hashtags such as #edfringe, #edtwinge and #festbuzz, amongst others. Provided people are using these appropriately they are a good indicator of relevant noise.

But not everyone uses hashtags and we want to be as comprehensive as possible in terms of monitoring and analysing everything that is being said about Fringe shows on Twitter. And, especially for established Twitter celebrities like Jimmy Carr, that is the crowdsourced review equivalent of skiing off-piste.

We have a comprehensive (but not entirely perfect) database of Fringe shows and performers that we can monitor mentions of.

We have also been manually establishing an ever growing database of “nicknames” that real people use to refer to the shows on Twitter.

And, yes, we can monitor mentions of performers’ @names.

For acts like Jimmy Carr, the latter approach affords both opportunities and problems. Many fans who are seeing him perform in Edinburgh will also be existing followers of his on Twitter. These people are more likely to refer to his show as @jimmycarr than Jimmy Carr or Rapier Wit – “Saw @jimmycarr at EICC last night. Brilliant!”

So if we actively monitor @jimmycarr we pretty much guarantee to pick up everything that his fans are saying about his Edinburgh shows. But we also guarantee to pick up everything and anything that his fans are saying about or to him, the vast majority of which has nothing to do with the Fringe. This means that we have to be cute about how we apply additional filters to maximise relevant noise and minimise the extraneous stuff. To this end we’ve been experimenting  with alternative approaches all through the Fringe – not just with Mr Carr it should be said.

Depending on how we have those filters set up we either open the floodgates to a deluge of (for our purposes) irrelevant crap, or we can over-zealously ‘prune’ an act’s mentions back to the ground. To be honest, the experimenting continues and we haven’t got it exactly right yet as Ms Salidatious so nicely points out. Indeed, at the moment, it is quite possible that Jimmy Carr is suffering from his Twitter celebrity rather than benefiting from it as far as EdTwinge is concerned.

We’re not going to divulge exactly how we’re currently filtering but suffice to say that our attitude to relevant noise is loosely related to the main currency for EdTwinge – namely Karma. Karma is a statistically robust measure of net positivity of sentiment that has been expressed about an act on Twitter.

For us Twingers (pronounced with a soft “g”) the learning we’re gaining from continually adjusting our filters is one of the main benefits of the whole exercise. EdTwinge is a non-commercial venture, but the engine behind it has undoubted commercial potential in the future and we need to get these things right.

We aim to be useful but do not claim to be perfect.

Tweet This Post