It was announced today that Twitter is now in Alpha testing for its upcoming analytics product/dashboard. Some screenshots have been made available and so far, the analytics look like a really interesting (if somewhat overdue) addition to the Twitter ecosystem. Many third party tools, like Hootsuite and TweetStats, have been providing Twitter analytics for some time, though each has its shortcomings. Hootsuite is probably the strongest player, particularly in light of their integration of influence rankings from Klout and Google Analytics. However, Hootsuite handcuffs users in a key way – they only track analytics for links that are shortened using either their ht.ly or ow.ly services. As a prolific and multi-device Twitter user, I’m constantly switching environments – from iPad to iPhone, from desktop to laptop. As I move across platforms, my preferred client also shifts. I like the native twitter app for iPad and iPhone, Hootsuite on laptop and desktop, in particular. On top of that, as I’m blogging or designing webpages – I use native twitter options like t.co via the tweet button and Twitter API.

The trouble with my approach is that it segments my click data. I can get one piece of the picture through hootsuite’s analytics but am pretty much blind to activity on non-ht.ly or ow.ly links. The Twitter Analytics tool looks to be a perfect solution to this problem. It will give me one centralized place to view all of the activity on my posts – retweets, mentions, clickthroughs, etc. – and for that I’m excited.

I have to admit, though, that at the same time I’m somewhat disappointed that they’re not taking it further. If they’d only apply some simple Social Network Analysis (SNA) – they could define network roles, introduce influence dynamics, and explore how I’m related to my followers and those I follow in terms of network effects. Tying into existing graphing tools and the current API infrastructure wouldn’t even be a major jump – particularly for a company with the development firepower that Twitter has.

Oh well, guess I’ll just have to wait until 2.0… until then, here’s to taking a thoughtful approach to how we build our networks!

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