Happy New Year!
Twitter officially launched to the public in July 2006. By 2008, the universe of applications developed to enhance the Twitter experience was boundless. While the ecosystem was burgeoning with apps, the ability to track and manage the apps designed for specific purposes was elusive.
I spent the better part of Fall 2008 studying and organizing the available Twitter apps available for new marketing, community management, and customer service professionals. Once organized, I published Twitter Tools for Marketing and Community Professionals on October 17, 2008. I actively curated and modified the list for several months. However, the rate of new and abandoned applications was too much for one person to manage. Instead, I focused my spare time and resources on helping Laura Fitton (@pistachio) and her team launch Oneforty.com, a comprehensive social app directory for all things Twitter. I remain as an advisor to this day.
The Twitterverse (Alpha)
To commemorate the move, I partnered once again with Jesse Thomas and JESS3 to visualize the most effective and productive tools for Twitter. In May 2009, we introduced the alpha of the Twitterverse (below). Unlike the Conversation Prism, the Twitterverse was not originally designed as a transmedia object, simply a social object packaged in the form of an infographic. The image never made it to 1.0 status as I dove head first into Engage and several other business endeavors. After all of this time, I felt the need to revisit this visual as the Twitter ecosystem only continues to gain in prominence in our digital culture.
In 2010, I focused my limited free time on the refresh of the Conversation Prism. Once that project was completed, I then blasted off toward the Twitterverse to rethink the methodology and ultimately the visual of the Twitterverse with the JESS3 team. Here we are, 20 months later, and I can’t believe this day is finally here.
Introducing The Twitterverse version 1.0
A new year, a new Twitterverse. 2011 marks the debut of the Twitterverse 1.0. Again, I revisited the landscape of useful Twitter apps designed for marketing, business, and service professionals. This time, we organized and positioned “representative” apps across 19 rings in the Twitter egosystem over the previous 12. Like its sibling, The Twitterverse is designed as a transmedia object. It’s available for free in a presentation-friendly format and also in high-res. For the first time, the Twitterverse is also available as a 22 x 28 poster.
With Twitter at the center of the stellar system, apps orbit at different rotations based on their design and functionality.
Ring 1: Branding
Ring 2: Geographics
Ring 3: Interest Graph
Ring 4: Dashboard
Ring 5: Event Management
Ring 6: Live Streaming
Ring 7: Geo Location
Ring 8: Relationships
Ring 9: Marketing and Advertising
Ring 10: Rich Media Ring 11: Communication Management
Ring 12: Research and Analysis Ring 13: Stream Management
Ring 14: Mobile Applications Ring 15: Trends Ring 16: Social CRM
Ring 17: Influence and Resonance
Ring 18: Twitter Search
Ring 19: Causation
Naturally with thousands of considerable apps available for Twitter, it’s impossible to include everything. However, this is an evolving graphic, so please leave your ideas and suggestions in the comments section here or on Flickr.
UPDATED: The Twitterverse covered in The Atlantic, The Next Web, Guardian UK (Thank you!)
Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook
The world of apps are big now…and its begging to get harder and harder just to keep up with them..but this is an good thing your doing Brian..
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
Thanks for the support!
Very helpful, Brian! It helps to delineate between the available Twitter apps to better understand which ones best serve your needs as a communicator/marketer. As with the Conversation Prism, I’m always impressed with your research and ability to visually represent useful data.
hi brian, i just love the way you are making your illustration it is great. By the way many applications are in the business world today and they are competing each other to come up with “WHO WILL be THE GREAT”.
Hello Brian, this is brilliant and much easier to internalize than lists. I knew I was just scratching the surface of twitter; makes me feel so pre telescope.
Thanks Cynthia…love it, “pre telescope”
Thanks Cynthia…love it, “pre telescope”
Thanks Cynthia…love it, “pre telescope”
Very cool and useful! Thanks Brian, again 😉
This is a really awesome and helpful illustration, providing a great view of Twitter in totality. Brilliant!
Twitter is a awesome tool and I find that I get more visit’s to my blog from tweets than any other referral source. By allowing other apps to integrate with Twitter, such as DISQUS, you allow your tweets to penetrate the TwitterVerse even further. Eventually allowing your “Social Influence”, as you have spoken about, to gain strength.
The visual really helps to understand this.
Thanks,
Craig
Twitter is a awesome tool and I find that I get more visit’s to my blog from tweets than any other referral source. By allowing other apps to integrate with Twitter, such as DISQUS, you allow your tweets to penetrate the TwitterVerse even further. Eventually allowing your “Social Influence”, as you have spoken about, to gain strength.
The visual really helps to understand this.
Thanks,
Craig
Twitter is a awesome tool and I find that I get more visit’s to my blog from tweets than any other referral source. By allowing other apps to integrate with Twitter, such as DISQUS, you allow your tweets to penetrate the TwitterVerse even further. Eventually allowing your “Social Influence”, as you have spoken about, to gain strength.
The visual really helps to understand this.
Thanks,
Craig
Twitter is a awesome tool and I find that I get more visit’s to my blog from tweets than any other referral source. By allowing other apps to integrate with Twitter, such as DISQUS, you allow your tweets to penetrate the TwitterVerse even further. Eventually allowing your “Social Influence”, as you have spoken about, to gain strength.
The visual really helps to understand this.
Thanks,
Craig
this is simply brilliant, helpful, inspiring and everything in between. I find that your take on the opportunities surrounding twitter to always be helpful and I appreciate the hard work you put into this, Thank you
Wow. I wish I had a copy of this to put on my wall. I’ve never been good at keeping up with all of the apps, and I sense from looking at this that I am lacking in that area at my own peril.
Plus, it’s really interesting and pretty to look at!
Well done, and Happy New Year!
Thank you Marjorie…hope this helps…it’s also available as a 22 x 28 poster:
http://www.theconversationprism.com/store/
Thanks!
Somehow I figured I would not be the first to think of that 🙂
Wow I can’t even imagine how much time went into putting this post together. I honestly didn’t picture the Twitterverse running that deep. Retweeted.
Thanks for all of your help with oneforty, Brian. We appreciate your support and mentorship 🙂
That is simply fantastic – thanks for putting your time into conceptualising and producing such a graphic. Outstanding!
As a non-techie I got the gist of what you are doing. Glad I found the site through a Twitter pardner. I blog at Geezerelderlycare and am exploring ways of using the Social Networks to promote my free social service blog.
Brian, your charts are a work of art! Sometimes it takes hours to define and detail various aspects of social media. However, once one of your charts is introduced into the mix, comprehension levels soar! As always, thanks for your continued thought leadership within social media. Happy New Year!
Paul Segreto nicely sums up what Brian Solis has done with these infographics. To build on Paul’s line of thinking, Brian has taken all these participants in the Twittersphere and curated them. He has used curatorial practice and thinking to show how they fit together into a meaningful story. Some of the main curation steps he must have taken on the way to developing these infographics: collect, study, compare, contrast, rank,organize, explain.
Funny how, in all the posting about infographics and about web curation, we don’t see so much about how infographics are so often a powerful curation tool.
It is fascinating to see how the Twitterverse has evolved, in addition to all the apps and businesses it has produced.
I love this universe 🙂
I love this universe 🙂
Please stay awhile 🙂
I absolutely love this, Brian! Think I should order the poster to decorate my cube.
Sounds like a great idea 😉
Sounds like a great idea 😉
Sounds like a great idea 😉
I absolutely love this, Brian! Think I should order the poster to decorate my cube.
I absolutely love this, Brian! Think I should order the poster to decorate my cube.
Brian, Like how you gave us a great visual broken down by rings then apps within those rings. The structure is a great learning tool. Thanks for your vision, insight, and thought provoking ideas. All the best.
Brian, Like how you gave us a great visual broken down by rings then apps within those rings. The structure is a great learning tool. Thanks for your vision, insight, and thought provoking ideas. All the best.
Brian, Like how you gave us a great visual broken down by rings then apps within those rings. The structure is a great learning tool. Thanks for your vision, insight, and thought provoking ideas. All the best.
Hi Brian, this is brilliant. Thanks for sticking to it and making it easy for us to use. U ROCK!
–/ (an impromptu sign for “rock”!)
Hey Brian…once again a brilliant and vibrant way to capture an almost daunting subject. Lots to absorb and extremely useful. Can’t wait to share with my next class at the Marshall School at USC. Keep it coming friend.
Happy New Year.
Hank Wasiak
Hank, Happy New Year my friend. Tis an honor to hear this from you. Thank you sir…
Hi Brian, once again this is a brilliant visualisation. It is especially useful for people like me trying to explain what this phenomena is all about to customers, clients, investors, friends and family.
Huge. It’s almost a little daunting, but once you spend a bit of time with it, everything comes together. Thanks for sharing.
http://www.hellobenteoh.com.au
To boldly go where no Tweet has gone before….
Brian, I continue to be amazed at your ability to distill the ever changing universe of social media into charts and graphs that provide continuity and direction for those of us trying to keep up. This chart of the “Twitterverse” is demonstration of the complexity at hand and your ability to create order out of what sometimes appears to be chaos. Thank you for being our guide!
Brian, I continue to be amazed at your ability to distill the ever changing universe of social media into charts and graphs that provide continuity and direction for those of us trying to keep up. This chart of the “Twitterverse” is demonstration of the complexity at hand and your ability to create order out of what sometimes appears to be chaos. Thank you for being our guide!
Brian, I continue to be amazed at your ability to distill the ever changing universe of social media into charts and graphs that provide continuity and direction for those of us trying to keep up. This chart of the “Twitterverse” is demonstration of the complexity at hand and your ability to create order out of what sometimes appears to be chaos. Thank you for being our guide!
Brian, this is a great image! its great to see some of the best apps and tools over there. Thank you so much this will be so useful in so many levels!.
Just one question: i see you have Radian6 in the Event Management area but not in the Social CRM, this seems a bit odd to me, I use the it and would have consider the platform to be so much more about CRM management maybe Research and Analysis, communication, marketing, etc. why did you decided that the level it belongs to is event management?
Thanks!
@meerskc thinks this is a great infographic, very well organized. We have our favorites and can use this as a decision point for additional needs. Thanks!
Very interesting article, 1 hour ago i found your blog but I want to return because it is very good. Happy new year
Brian, thanks for creating and sharing this. Finally I can make sense out of what seems to be so much chaos surrounding Twitter!
Brian, thanks for creating and sharing this. Finally I can make sense out of what seems to be so much chaos surrounding Twitter!
Nice to know someone can make sense of all of this.
Excellent infographics and info organization with rings for Twitter ecosystem – inspiring design work here.
I love the twitter verse. Do you by any chance have it as a list with hyperlinks to the apps or the poster embeded with the links? Thanks!
Here you go!
http://oneforty.com/pages/twitterverse
Very good, useful article. Many good tips here