Below is the second in our series of reports ranking the online share of voice for the cities participating in the Google fiber initiative.
This report updates our initial metrics based on the insights we’ve collected from our research, which includes all of the direction submitted through blog comments on our first report and emails we’ve received directly. And on that note, thank you to everyone who took the time to contribute to this research on behalf of your city. As we hope we’ve shown in these reports, active participation is essential to any good online efforts, and yours is much appreciated.
Please note that if your city did NOT make the top 10 in our report, it is no indication that you are in any way not competitively positioned in the initiative. Again, Google has multiple factors in their decision making process, including how interested a community is in working with Google, community support, local activities, needs and resources, approved construction methods, local regulatory issues and area broadband speeds. And though most participating cities assert that online interaction in their campaigns will increase the chances of favorability in their selection, ultimately Google will decide which factors are most relevant.
The second report is available for download here. Just click on the image below.
And please reach out to us through the comments below if you have any questions or comments on the information and insights we’re presenting.
Cool reports guys! How do you generate the info for these? We added nearly 500 images to our website but they don’t appear in your ranking – but then again I am color blind and mildly stupid.
David –
Thanks for updating your report – I’ve been waiting for this all week!
I’m curious how Radian6 is pulling it’s image data. Jared’s right, the Topeka effort has lots of photos posted on our FB Group as well as our website, particularly in the last five days. Would photos posted on those channels not be found for some reason?
Also, I was curious, does the Duluth population include Superior as well? I believe their push is for the Twin Ports, but I’m not familiar with that area so I wasn’t sure whether Superior was a separate town or possibly a suburb of Duluth.
Again, thanks for posting!
@AlissaSheley
Great report! From What I see Topeka is basically on the top 3. I cannot wait till I see the final report. Thanks to all those TBT volunteers who have been working hard in putting Topeka first.
Consti Garay
Good work Grand Rapids on the Google Fiber project, keep it pushing!
Hello David,
Thank you for your reply, I do have a follow up question about the photo tagging.
How would you suggest Topeka “tag” their photo’s?
As mentioned, we’ve added 500 images this last week on facebook and on our blog.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=photos&gid=300943806610
http://thinkbigtopeka.com/galleries/
I’m not really sure how we can make their presence more obvious to your study.
Thanks for your time
-Brandon
Hi Alissa – one thing to note in addition to what David said: because Duluth just tracked in the data, we only used their data from the US Census.
Hope that helps.
Go Fresno!
Hi David, I just wanted to let you know I reposted this on my blog and linked back to you. http://www.moxydesign.com/blog/
Nicole
David & Andrew -
Thanks for the answers and clarification. I appreciate it – keep up the good work!
@AlissaSheley
So how should we ‘tag’ the images on our website and facebook page? (Seriously, just update the alt tag to Think Big Topeka?) Also – how do we tag our 30 minute commercial-free primetime CBS special, NAHL-Record-Breaking-Attendance Google Roadrunners Hockey Game, and international media attention?
Congrats David on a great report. We here in Gainesville, FL have been tracking various city news via The Google Fiber News Tracker at http://ThinkBigwithaGig.com/ If you aren’t already, I’d recommend tracking “Gig4GNV” references with your tools/report — we’ve executed a pretty tightly focused brand/campaign without the stunts. I know there are many factors, but just on Facebook Fans we’re in the middle of your top 10 — particular when you look at % of population.
I’d be interested in getting your list of 90 cities, including the key tag/brand used for their efforts (like “Gig4GNV”) — u can email gig4gnv (at) gmail (dot) com
Asheville is gaining big time. I do not see this much talent (already in progress) in the other top contenders. check out these videos on Asheville!
http://www.youtube.com/user/AshevilleOVision
I would second what Dan Rua posted regarding Gainesville, Florida and the Gig4GNV effort.
There have been great strides made by many volunteers using the official website – http://www.gig4gnv.com – and official Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/gig4gnv. We haven’t renamed cities or jumped in lakes but we have worked hard on both the community effort as well as the RFI.
Greenville SC – http://www.WeAreFeelingLucky.com #GoogleOnMain / #LuckyGVL thanks you for your work..
John M. Hoyt – http://www.HomelandSecureIT.com
You need to do some searches on other tags – would be interesting to see results with #luckyGVL and #GoogleOnMain included…or other relevant searches related to individual campaigns – Greenville should be higher on radar… not always going to capture everything with just “Google fiber”. There’s too many variables…
Google is WAY to sharp to miss out on Greenville, SC #googleonmain #luckygvl Google us!
On March 19th, I left a comment under your post in which you announced your first “report.” It brought to your attention that you were misidentifying the number of Facebook fans in Greensboro, NC’s group — and I left you a link to the facebook page so you could see for yoursefl your 4,400 error.
Your second report again missreports the number of Facebook fans for Greensboro. You report 2,908 when it is, in fact, 5,735.
Why do you persist in getting this wrong repetedly?
Hi Roch 101 –
We’re certainly happy to see cities increasing their fan base on Facebook; for consistency with our measurements the fans were totaled at one point in time, and left unchanged. Fan totals were captured on 3/17 on 3/24 for the first and second report respectively; this assured that each city was represented by a fair ‘snapshot’ for each report.
It would be entirely plausible for any city to see a sudden swell in membership after our data was captured. In fact, this was often the case.
To quote the second report: “[...]Greensboro’s significant growth in fan base from 901 to 2,908.”
Congrats on the rapid growth!
You actually stand at 5,742 as of when I post this comment. Best wishes to you and all other cities that were involved with this effort.
EDIT: There’s some confusion on the sincerity of this post – it was indeed sincere.
Further replies on Greensboro will come soon.
I am shocked that Greenville SC did not make the top 10. We have tagged photos and tweets with #Googleonmain and #LuckyGvL. Our community came together and showed enourmous support. I would hope that you will Google #GoogleonMain and you will see the support that we have shown. I know that Google would not overlook such a great city as Greenville SC.
If you looked at 90 communities, where are the ones with less than 80,000 population? Duluth has the smallest number of residents in your report; where are the others?
With over 1,100 communities responding to Google’s RFI, I suggest your report is heavily skewed around 1) population, and 2) social conversations because of population.
What about Greenville, SC?? We had over 2,000 citizens some together with LED glow sticks to spell out Google in the heart of our great city. Google Fiber is all anyone in Greenville is talking about. Even Time Magazine is doing a story. You need to rethink the methods you’re using to gather your data because we should not only be in the top ten, but the top three at least. Go on Twitter and search the tags #LuckyGVL and #GoogleOnMain also go to WeAreFeelingLucky.com and you’ll be enlightened ! GO GREENVILLE!!!
10pts to David for doing the report
10pts for the beautiful format
10pts for caring
10pts for responding to comments on blog
10pts for listening
10pts for being humble
10pts for charm
10pts for helpful feedback
That’s a lot of points.
Question: David, are y’all tracking tweets and hashtags? Seems like many cities are using hashtags in some capacity to organize threads.
David,
Thanks for listening and having an open mind.
>please make sure you’ve got your city included in your hashtags too!
The problem with the hashtag #Greenville is that there are 25 states in the US with a city named Greenville, but only one #GoogleOnMain!
How did Pittsburgh do in your matrix? Google’s application map seemed to indicate that a very large number of Pittsburghers had individual responses. Should that be a category included in your analysis?
Andrew,
Thank you for the reply. Really? That’s what you think happened? That there was a “surge” in the number of Facebook members for Greensboro after you collected your data? I think you were sloppy in your data collection and are too incurious to examine that possibility or too unprofessional to acknowledge and correct your errors.
I spell it out here.
David, great report!
To make Google’s decision easier, we launched a city-selection tool that lets you rank your top 5 choices for Google Fiber. Click here to vote for your favorite city: http://zoomprospector.com/googlefiber.
Note: while this quiz is for fun and selects communities that have performed some of the funniest promotions, the data is all real. Enjoy!
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me
Arti Kuthiala
GIS Planning Inc.
akuthiala@gisplanning.com
David,
Thank you for the reply. I appreciate you taking a look and trying to accommodate the facts. I have some new information that actually mitigates your error and accounts for some of the confusion.
Although I think some, if not much, of this could have been avoided had you followed my link to Greensboro’s Facebook page from the comment I left on March, 19th and, while I still think you should not leave your reports uncorrected when you know them to contain errors, here is what I have learned about Greensboro’s Facebook pages from their administrator.
The original Facebook page went over 4,000 members on March 11. By March 19th, it had over 5,300 and soon reached 5,800. At that point, because of messaging limitations, a new fan page was created. That is the one you saw with a couple thousand or so. I have not been able to ascertain exactly when that was created.
To add to the confusion, “some” of the first Facebook members were ported as fans to the new page. The administrator says he does not know how many.
So, in my opinion, the overlap of an unknown number of members and fans between the old and new Facebook groups make them unreliable indicators of the number of Greensboro for Google fans going forward. We know there were just over 5,800 when the new page was created sometime shortly after March 19th, but I would consider that the last reliable snapshot — for what it’s worth.
I hope that helps and, seriously, good luck to Grand Rapids.