Kameraad Mhambi

Kameraad Mhambi has been playing around with a wonderful piece of software called Radian6. It’s used to monitor ‘conversations’ or what is being said by whom on services like Twitter, Blogs, Youtube comments, Forums etc.

Using Radian6 is fantastic, but expensive. Entry level comes out at $600 a pop per month. I tested a few keywords on it for the last month, and here’s a few graphs I exported. I thought I tried it on familiar themes for the benefit of Mhambi readers. Hence a Zuma vs Mbeki match-up.

This cloud shows keywords associated and found in references to Zuma online. And here is the same for Mbeki…

Note the keywords that do and don’t figure for both.

Here is the keyword cloud for mentions of them both.

Note Zuma is larger and words like ‘rival’ appear. To be sure Zuma’s name is much more prevalent than Mbekis at present in social media.

This graph shows mentions of the keywords ‘service delivery‘, ‘crime‘ and ‘corruption‘ in conjunction with either Zuma or Mbeki. No surprises here.

Unfortunately I only have access to a months data on Radian6, while you could have a couple of years to play with if your a fully paid up user.

They even archive Tweets and blogs posts related to a topic. Pretty impressive stuff with Orwellian possibilities.

Related deployments:

1. Rain follows Zuma – the end of the dry Mbeki season?
2. Kgalema Motlanthe’s elevation signal divided coalition against Mbeki
3. Thabo Mbeki – bookending failure with two great speeches
4. International assesments of Zuma
5. Don’t underestimate Zuma