This document summarizes research on using Twitter data from the Czech Republic for data mining purposes. It finds that there are approximately 10,000 active Twitter users in the Czech Republic, with 44% of tweets in Czech and 33% in English. Location data shows the majority of tweets come from Prague, Brno, and Ostrava. Different data mining methods like frequency analysis and semantic similarity are used to analyze topics and identify opinion leaders. The document also finds that Czechs tweet most on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that Twitter can sometimes predict future search trends based on concerts and events more quickly than Google.

1. Czech Twitter
as
a data mining source
Josef Šlerka, WebExpo 2009

2. Twitter.com
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-
blogging service that enables its users to send and
read messages knows as tweets.
Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters
displayed on the authorʼs profile page and delivered
to the authorʼs subscribers who are known as
followers
(Wikipedia)

3. What is data
mining and how is
it connected with
Twitter?

4. Data mining is the process of extracting
patterns from data. As more data are gathered,
data mining is becoming an increasingly
important tool to transform there data into
information
(Wikipedie)
Different variations would be text mining,
web mining including semantic analysis

5. Twitter Data mining
- makes it easy to use all data mining methods
- adds ʻʻtimeʼʼ & ʻʻspaceʼʼ
- provides real-time picture
- easy connects with other social media (about 30%
users have unique nickname for all platforms)

6. Data mining - different methods
- different variations of semantic distance of
similarities (Jaccard index)
- frequency analysis based on time (are people
happier in the morning or in the evening?)
- frequency analysis based on location
- one of the results -> identification of opinion
makers in the social networks

7. Transmission News
using different APIs to
get more information

8. Transmission News = 5 APIs in one
www. transnews.tw
• 5x Twitter News Service accounts
• 1x Yahoo Geo
• 1x Google Search AJAX
• 1x Google Maps
• 1x Open Calais
• and a little bit of Wikipedia

9. www.transnews.tw

10. This brings us to the
downside of Twitter API

11. API searches are limited
to the number of
inquiries
Even worse, their data
doesnʼt go farther than
1.5 weeks in the past

12. Hence the development
of Sparrow 1.0

13. Czech Twitter by the
numbers

14. Sparrow 1.0
application methodology
- archives all tweets located in Czech republic in
hourly interval via Twitter API (starting June 2009)
- automatically detects language
- identifies Czech tweets with word count dictionary
- compares Czech Twitter statistics with foreign
countriesʼ statistics

15. Sparrow 1.0 - June 2009 stats
- about 700.000 tweets
- created by 10,628 unique users who enabled their
geo-location (CZ) or tweeted in Czech
- 5.880 users tweeted at least once in Czech
- 2.424 Czech writing users revealed their geo-location
(usually about 30% of users do that)

16. How many Twitter users are in the Czech republic?
Between 6,000 - 8,000 users write in Czech
1.000 až 2.000 users prefer English
There are about
10,000 active Twitter users in CR

17. Whatʼs the Czech Twitter dynamics?
Every four weeks the number of users with at
least one tweet rises about 25%
The number of active users rises 3-5% each week
Absolute number of tweets rises about 25% too

18. What characteristics do Czech tweets have?
2 % are RT
4 % use a ʻʼ#ʼʼ
21.5 % represent reply and conversation
34.6 % includes a link

19. What languages do
people in the CR use for
tweeting?

20. Letʼs see that graph
English Czech Slovak Deutsch others
13%
4%
7%
44%
33%

21. Geo-location breakdown of Tweets among big cities in CR
(July-August 2009) 6. Liberec 14178x
en - 9561x ~ 67.44%
1. Praha 247685x
cs - 2864x ~ 20.20%
en - 116580x ~ 47.07%
sk - 462x ~ 3.26%
cs - 79957x ~ 32.28% 9 cities Prague others
sk - 16449x ~ 6.64%
7. České Budějovice
6219x
2. Brno 37021x
cs - 2589x ~ 41.63%
en - 16104x ~ 43.50%
en - 1386x ~ 22.29%
cs - 14753x ~ 39.85%
es - 551x ~ 8.86%
sk - 3360x ~ 9.08%
8. Hradec Králové
3. Ostrava 23836x
11888x
en - 13885x ~ 58.25% 25% cs - 4696x ~ 39.50%
cs - 5306x ~ 22.26% 30% en - 4400x ~ 37.01%
pl - 1638x ~ 6.87%
de - 1113x ~ 9.36%
4. Plzeň 13681x
9. Ústí nad Labem
en - 9160x ~ 66.95%
12016x
cs - 2206x ~ 16.12%
en - 4266x ~ 35.50%
fr - 417x ~ 3.05%
de - 2882x ~ 23.98%
cs - 2570x ~ 21.39%
5. Olomouc 10754
en - 4619x ~ 42.95%
10. Pardubice 5576x
cs - 3062x ~ 28.47%
cs - 2718x ~ 48.74%
pt - 999x ~ 9.29%
45% en - 1831x ~ 32.84%
sk - 414x ~ 7.42%

22. And what about
ʻʻwhen?ʼʼ
And why does it
matter?

23. This is what weʼve learned in a few months:
- Czechs tweet most often on Tuesday or Thursday, and
the least in Saturday
Around the world the most popular day is Tuesday, and the
least is Sunday
- The number of tweets rises steadily from the beginning to
the end of the month, then falls and begins rising again.
That means people tweet more at the end of the month
than at the beginning.

24. Prediction of the presence
Google vs. Twitter

25. MADONNA
IN PRAGUE
13. 8. 2009

26. Madonna - August 2009 - Google search

27. Madonna - August 2009 - Czech Twitter

28. Sometimes Twitter is quicker & can predict future
searches

29. September 17th,
Ostrava

30. Rammstein - August 2009 - Google search

31. Rammstein - August 2009 - Czech Twitter
17.9.2009

32. Thanks for your attention.
Questions? Ideas?
slerka@ataxo.com