As a platform, Twitter is still in its infancy.

The popular micro-blogging platform has stuck to a simplistic, basic feature set in the face of its monstrous growth. As a result, Twitter falls short when it comes to offering analytics that help users determine how their tweets are being received.

Thankfully, countless third-party web applications have sprouted up to help publishers closely measure the way content is being consumed.

At entertainment trade magazine Variety, Director of Online Marketing Abe Burns keeps tabs on his magazine’s content using a wide range of tools. At Variety, Burns’ uses a handful of tools to measure the success of his publication’s 12 Twitter accounts.

We asked Burns for some of his recommendations on what third-party web services are worth publishers’ time.

Monitter

Monitter is an easy way to keep track of the conversation taking place around your publication’s niche on Twitter.

The service allows for real-time searches containing a term of your choosing. The site will instantly update whenever a user sends out a tweet using one of your selected terms using a waterfall-like graphical interface.

“When we have breaking news, we can see if [Twitter users] are talking about it, and what they are saying in real-time,” said Burns, adding that he also uses the service to measure if Variety’s competitors have caught on to a breaking story.

Tweetmeme

Tweetmeme takes the model of the social news site Digg and applies it to Twitter.

The site ranks the links that are being circulated on Twitter according to the amount of retweets they have received. The links are categorized by topic, each containing its own RSS feed.

As a result, Tweetmeme can give its users the pulse of what’s popular on Twitter, and in extension, the Web.

Publishers can use this information to see the popularity of their content, as well as seeing what other content in your niche is getting a large amount of attention.

The service also provides metrics about the popularity of tweets, including retweets in the past 30 days and a feed of users retweeting the link.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is a URL shortening service that condenses long web addresses into 13 characters to help fit into Twitter’s strict 140-character limit.

There are many URL shorteners in the wild with some publications, like Techcrunch, creating their own.  However Bit.ly is one of the only services to provide metrics.

“It’s an invaluable tool,” said Burns, “I can’t rave about it enough.”

Users sign up for a Bit.ly account, and whenever they use the service to shorten a URL, they can monitor how many clicks the URL is receiving. The resulting metrics should give publishers a good idea for what content their Twitter followers are interested in.

Typically, Web analytics will only list “twitter.com” as a referring link, with no indication as to which tweet directed the traffic. Seeing what tweets drive traffic can help publications fine-tune an online marketing strategy.

Twitscoop

Twitscoop aims to be a replacement Twitter dashboard that displays your updates alongside trending topics.

“I like Twitscoop because it has a graphical interface with a really good search,” Burns said.

But the site’s greatest feature is the ability to see the popularity of other users’ links. If a competitor tweets out a link to a similar story that your publication is running, you can see how many people clicked through and compare to your own Bit.ly numbers.

Burns said that he also uses the service to make sure Variety is part of the social Web conversation. For example, when “Star Trek” was released, Star Trek stories were popular on Twitscoop.

Burns then peaked at his internal numbers on Variety’s Star Trek editorial to make sure the magazine was also riding the wave of popularity.

METRICS TO FUEL MARKETING

With the above tools, it may be easy to get caught up in measuring every detail of Twitter and then adjust content accordingly. However, Burns says rarely do his Twitter metrics affect Variety’s editorial department.

“It’s more about the best ways of delivering it,” he said.
The metrics allow Burns to make sure he is serving his audience correctly. Do they prefer an automated feed? What sections of the magazine deserve their own Twitter accounts? Does the background image work?

“It’s about delivering a great user experience,” said Burns, “Give them the information they need in the way they get to get to it.”

OTHER SITES

Though Burns mainly uses the four tools mentioned above, there are lots of other sites for Twitter metrics, including: