World of Warcraft trends big on Twitter video games
by Mike Schramm 
Jun 15th 2009 at 9:00PM
TweetMyGaming is a site started up by our friends over at gamerDNA (they routinely contribute to our sister site Massively, including sharing some great information on WoW's demographics), and while the site is designed to track all mentions of video games on Twitter, one game has more or less dominated the discussion since the site debuted about a month ago. Well, actually, it was The Sims 3 -- apparently as big as World of Warcraft is, it still can't stop EA's Sims series for sheer popularity (or top the series in sales). But still, WoW is sitting at a respectable number two in tweets, and watching the feed go by over on the game's page lets you in on all the different slices of the game's community, from the hardcore raiders to the folks just trying to grab some time to play.Of course, all of the values on the site are constantly changing, and we're sure they're still tweaking the formula of how games move up and down the list -- The Sims 3 is coming hot off of its release a few weeks ago, and while WoW has a vibrant twitter community for sure, the news about mounts and the new patch 3.2 information last week probably helped keep it up on the radar (just wait and see what happens over BlizzCon -- I wouldn't be surprised to see WoW-related topics trending over Twitter at large).
But WoW is definitely a game that people talk about no matter what's in the news lately. Interesting, but not surprising, that it's holding its own even among the trendiest games on Twitter.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Joeribbons Jun 15th 2009 9:34PM
My best mate wrote this site. Richard Henry. Also creator of cursebird.com
I'll be letting him know my favourite WoW blog mentioned his work :P
Tolkfan Jun 15th 2009 11:20PM
What's this Twiter thing I'm hearing about all the time? Is it another one of those useless things you create just because your internet "firends" have it? Like blogs and myspace profiles?
Necrotica Jun 16th 2009 2:02AM
I dunno, but the twittering seems very popular in Iran right now ;)
http://hashtags.org/tag/iranelection/messages
The Claw Jun 16th 2009 2:32AM
Got it in one, Tolkfan. Just say no.
MasterAsh Jun 16th 2009 3:02AM
Hit the nail on the head. . .
I'm constantly amazed by how over the last several years, things have become popular simply by being popular. Just trying to figure out how these things happen makes my brain sweat, with MySpace being the worst offender. . .
Seriously. . .What in the world was MySpace doing that wasn't already being done before? Besides turning a person's quantity of imaginary friends into some kind of social high score, nothing. Oh wait. . .maybe that's all it took, in which case humankind's days are numbered.
13ent Jun 16th 2009 3:20AM
A very recent academic research article was already published saying that Twitter was NOT a representative sample of any real population. If my memory serves correctly without looking up the information again, something around 90% of all Tweets came from less than 10% of the Tweeting community, and the average amount of "Tweets" per user on Twitter was just one anyway. As such, using Twitter as a representative sample in any sort of even half-hearted attempt at appearing academic is falling very short of the bar. Picture just in theory, these numbers could be very skewed just because Sims 3 users are also more likely to not only be Twitterers (I really am struggling with this terminology), but also tweet more often. Since I'm sure no one besides my own fellow social science researchers give a hoot about methodology or margin of errors, I'll just go ahead and give the short version:
These numbers' meaning has been misconstrued, and has already been suggested to marketing firms, using Twitter as a representative sample of the opinions of a larger population is not accurate.
Johnny K Jun 16th 2009 9:35AM
I don't think the point of this site is to be used as dissertation research, it's just a fun way to monitor the goings on of some cool games on a real-time scale. It'll get better and more useful as people send in their suggestions.
Joeribbons Jun 16th 2009 9:50AM
You make a really good point... if it was relative.
The whole point of this site is to see what the TWITTER community is talking about, and so to say it's an unfair portrayal of a larger population is partially true, but not really connected as the site never claims to be a guaranteed overall view of a larger population.
I completely agree that there are a lot more complicated issues with tracking gaming tweets on twitter, the main one for me being, why would a WoW player bother tweeting, when he could be playing WoW instead... hence there probably being less tweets from the twitter community about WoW. And of course, someone who loves a game might tweet about it more than once, but in a conversation with someone in real life, you might mention a particular subject multiple times, hence making it 'more talked about'-therefore making the multiple tweets on this site a more realistic representation.
You make some valid points, but the site never claims to be what you said it is, and certainly never tries to be 'academic'.
It may not be accurate of the world's population, but no one said it was did they...
Basically, I think you may have seen the site in the wrong way, it's been marketed as a twitter based app, so it's very clear it only concerns and involves twitter users anyway.
If it were to be called "the world's gaming" or something, then yes the site would be inaccurate, but since it goes out to measure only what is spoken on twitter, it is the most accurate thing that you could possibly have.
MasterAsh Jul 10th 2009 10:48AM
Thank you oh-so-much for your comment.
Hopefully those on the fence of enlightenment will take it to heart and decades from now put into motion events that will undoubtedly benefit all of humanity.
(And yes, that was meant without any sarcasm. I'm a little drunk, but am posting this comment with nothing but sincerity nonetheless.)
Thomas Jespersen Jun 16th 2009 8:42AM
WoW may the the most twittered game, but what are the twitterers writing about? I have tried to look at twitter before and most I could find mentioning warcraft was links to pay-for gold-making guides and leveling guides and copycat blogs that copy from other popular blogs (including wow.com).
Scritty Jun 16th 2009 5:13AM
Well, WoW has massive interactive online presence both built into the game and in very well established forums.
Although Sims3 has some interactivity possible in game(through the launcher) it is no-where near as accessible.
It stands to reason that people who want to talk about the Sims will find somewhere else to do it. People who want to discuss WoW - esspecially the tiny soundbites that twitter allows - will do it in game.
It doesn't suprise me at all that more people twitter sims than WoW...they have to !
jpfeeney285 Jun 16th 2009 11:35PM
What I don't get is how a virtual doll house is so popular.
Thamelas Jun 20th 2009 9:20AM
Well I use Twitter to talk about guides I make for WoW on my website http://www.wowguideonline.com