Mapping the Twitter networks of #legendsofecho

Ed's note: This is a guest post from Nicky Allen who has been doing some incredibly interesting data-mining and representation using Nodexl.Twitter is such a great way to gauge whether a brands PR campaign is working. Until now you had to rely on some dodgy report and some old fashioned press clippings from your PR agency .A few weeks back saw the launch of the “Legends of Echo” a multiplayer social game for mobile phones launched by The Grid team. It’s a cool game that maps South Africa in the echo and players build battle gear, trade and battle. So after a week of action I mapped Twitter activity of #legendsofecho and it’s pretty impressive.This nodexl map shows the action across Twitter on #legendsofecho. Everyone on the map has mentioned, replied or retweeted #legendsofecho in the first 4 days. The lines between the participants indicate a tweet containing #legendsofecho. The bigger and messier the birds nest, the better. This indicates lots of conversations and a dense network. The size of the images indicates the number of followers that participant have on Twitter, which indicates that there are a number of rockstar participants.So what does this really tell us?Right now Legends of Echo is on the right track, the right people are saying cool things about the game. This is what every brand aspires to in a launch phase. But Legends of Echo has a way to go because right now the tweets have not yet expanded far enough beyond the product team. While there is conversation around the core group, @Nicharry is still central to the tweeting. In time the team wants to see many duplications of the map above, see it growing and @Nicharry and the @Legendsofecho tweeting becoming less central, then they will have reached an effective virality on Twitter.I pulled this map a couple of days ago, about 5 days after the last one. It shows some interesting development. The twittershere around the core group has become quieter but there are some interesting developments, Legends of Echo has been picked up by people completely unconnected to the core group, this is show by the individuals and the small 3 and 4 connected groups along the bottom. This is good and bad news for the team. While it’s really exciting to see Legends of Echo picked up by unconnected others, however most of these peoples tweets were not retweeted or replied too (hence the isolated individuals). What one wants to see is that these groups grow to the size and bigger and mirror the birds nest type activity of the core group.All in all it’s been a good first few weeks for echo on Twitter, I’ll keep watching and map the progress with interest.*Disclaimer: Nicky Allen is the Marketing Coordinator for Legends of Echo.