We want to bring aboard a data scientist (i.e. a Computer Science, Statistics or Business Analytics student) for the summer to help us derive new insights from our data, find interesting data sets for publication, and test assumptions about social distribution against the reality.

The intern will benefit from a remarkable opportunity to develop highly-demanded skills with our unique database of fascinating real-world data, in a flexible and friendly startup environment.

The successful candidate will have:

• Strong Excel skills
• Experience with SQL
• Training in statistical methods & packages (R preferred)
• A curious and analytical mindset

Experience with some of the following will be a plus:

• Semantic Analysis
• Machine Learning
• Data Reporting and Visualisation
• Cassandra
• Hadoop
• Java

Among the projects you’ll have the opportunity to work on are the following:

• Developing a method to define a threshold for “trendingness” for different categories of content

• Helping to design a system to generate and distribute client-facing reports on our data

• Pulling and cleaning down data sets for publication showing the most successful social news sources, journalists, and topics.

• Perform quantitative research on the social lifecycle of a news story to help us refine our algorithms, and for possible publication

The internship will be paid, and will last for 10-12 weeks, from June 24 to mid-September, with a possibility of follow-on part time work if desired.

An important note – we understand the difference between an internship and a job. Although we will expect you to contribute to NewsWhip’s business, we will strive to give you the best possible environment to ready your skills for the workplace, and provide you with support and assistance on your dissertation or thesis if required.

If you think this role is for you, then send an email to intern@newswhip.com by June 10th, with a CV including relevant academic results, and a short cover letter indicating your motivations in applying.

If it’s not for you, but you know someone who might think it’s a great opportunity, please pass it on.

As you may know, Spike is NewsWhip’s tool for keeping the best journalists and marketers on top of their beats and topics of interest. Each time a news story or blog post is published on the web, Spike automatically starts testing Twitter and Facebook for early social traction. Each day, it tracks over 200,000 stories and highlights the gems that start getting social traction within minutes of publication.

This makes Spike a really powerful and simple technology for staying ahead of big stories and news developments. But to see what’s emerging, Spike users have until now had to open a browser page on Spike, enter keywords, and check in on multiple pages.

No more. Today we are announcing Spike Alerts – our new email alerts system that allows you stay plugged into social news developments without having to stay plugged into Spike.

You define the topics and sources: get a regular view of stories starting to trend from the BBC, from the UK, from the Huffington Post, from hundreds of other publications. Check on more specific niches – news about North Korea, Syria, about psychology, or fashion. If you like, get regular digests of the latest trending cats. Or Meerkats.

You can filter your news by topic, country, city, search term, publication, or even a country/topic combo!

You can define the frequency of Spike alerts: get them as frequently as every half hour, like many of our newsroom clients do. If you go that frequent, your inbox will get a little pummelled, but think of it as hot new stories knocking on the door. Over 20 international news companies in our alpha trial of Spike Alerts are already using alerts set to that frequency, so they are finding something useful in it.

New users can set up Alerts in a couple of minutes with a new (free) Spike account here. Existing users can click here to get set up.

It’s a simple setup – pick the filters you want to receive alerts for, and how often you want to receive them.

And that’s it! You’ll receive your Spike Alerts as frequently as you’d like, direct to your inbox, with all the latest trending news in a simple, multi-device format.

We’ve committed to providing Spike users with all functionalities they need to filter the socially validated, quality content from the noise of the web, double quick. If you’re a Spike user and there’s a change or extra you’d really like to see implemented, let us know at spike@newswhip.com. We’d be delighted to hear from you.

We set out to analyse the sharing activity on news stories discussing Thatcher’s death to determine how the online world reacted to her passing. We found that of the 6,474 articles about her death published in the subsequent 24 hours, the most-shared stories were predominantly negative. Sharing activity on headlines such as “Thatcherism Was a National Catastrophe That Still Poisons Us” (shared 1,980 times on Twitter and 3,837 times on Facebook) and “21 Incredibly Angry Songs About Margaret Thatcher” (2,082 tweets, 11,301 Facebook shares) vastly outweighed more positive headlines like “Tributes Pour in for Margaret Thatcher” (800 tweets, 1,608 shares), by a factor of almost four to one.

While most of the top social stories about Ms Thatcher were neutral reports of the facts, a surprising number were attacks. Analyzing the sentiment expressed in the top fifty most shared news articles in that 24 hour period, 8 were positive, 28 were neutral, and 14 were negative on the former Prime Minister.

Overall, negative stories were significantly more popular on social media than the positive ones, generating 340,000 interactions compared to 95,000 – a nearly 4-to-1 split in favour of the “Ding Dong” camp. Evidently the maxim “don’t speak ill of the dead” doesn’t hold much water for social media users when it comes to this topic. As street parties sprung up around Britain (and in Argentina too), social media became a venue for real debate of Thatcher’s legacy, rather than just tribute-paying.

As we’ve noted before, it’s often the most remarkable or emotional events and stories that inspire people to share. When you read a piece of news that affects you personally – you often want to share it with your friends. If there is one thing Thatcher could do, it was inspire an emotional response – and it seems that at the end of her life, the strongest emotions were from those who saw her not as a national hero, but as a divisive and destructive leader.

On the day her death was announced, the most-shared article in the world by our metrics argued that respecting the grief of the Thatcher family is “appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize”, but that critical discussion of her life and policies is still relevant, essential and appropriate. As is clear from the biggest social stories about Thatcher’s life, it’s now a lot harder for socially constructed taboos to get in the way of real, public discussion of government policy and how it affects peoples’ lives.

Here’s our latest new feature, as requested by several of our users: real time conversation view.

Real time conversation view adds a new layer of information for Spike users. Once you’ve spotted a trending story of interest, click on the tab below it to see all the tweets mentioning the story, and see what’s being said about it live.

Spike displays the most popular (retweeted, favorited) tweets mentioning the story, mixed with the most recent. You can drill down, click around, and overall get an exact picture of what people on Twitter are saying about the story.

Here’s a story on Tony Blair’s reaction to celebration parties held following the death of Baroness Margaret Thatcher. Below it, a recent tweet mentioning the story.

And you can zoom in to see dozens of the reactions to the story, and see why it’s trending. With this piece, the story being popular on Twitter does not seem to equate with Tony’s popularity:

Here’s some reaction to news that a Greek government document envisages reclaiming WWI and WWII reparations from Germany. Some users just re-tweet the headline. But a good number add their own commentary, giving it instant color.

Sometimes the reaction on Twitter might reveal the “real” story, and reveal why a story is trending. Spike user and Social Media Editor at USA Today Mary Nahorniak recently told us about how this worked in the USA Today newsroom with a story about Costco:

“Last week a trending headline on Spike was simply, “Costco Profit Soars.” The editor I was working with wondered why that was popular on social media, and a quick scan of the comments made it clear that the social element was that this news was coming just days after Costco’s CEO spoke out about minimum wage. Every Twitter post made that connection.

In my newsroom, we often ask, “What are people saying about this story?” This is one more way of getting at that answer.”

And last but not least, the live view lets you see the inevitable Twitter, eh, humour that emerges after a story breaks. Here’s some droll comments on today’s news that the US Navy shot down a drone with a laser beam. Complete with inevitable Star Wars comparisons.

As an extra bonus in our live view, users can click the Facebook “F” to see exactly how much sharing, liking and commenting activity each trending story is getting.

Next in the pipeline for Spike users is our rather awesome and granular alerts system. We’ll be rolling it out to our users in the next few weeks.

If you haven’t already, sign up for a free trial of Spike now – takes about a minute, saves a great deal of time (and open tabs) for staying on top of the stories that are matter now to all the other humans.

- Paul

Every news website must immediately rush to make sure its homepage isn’t woefully out of date. Some sources will have the benefit of first-hand sources and wire services, others will be forced to play catch-up.

NewsWhip was tracking the world’s news media as the story broke today. The BBC, fittingly as the UK’s national broadcaster, was first to the story, hitting the publish button at 12:49:48 GMT having been contacted about the story by Thatcher’s family. You can see how the story proliferated through the sources we track, in ten-minute intervals, in the graph below.

You can see a similar pattern to the one we noted in the wake of the papal resignation – an initial spike (35 minutes after the news broke) as everyone rushes to acknowledge the fact, then a second spike soon after as hastily-composed comment and context pieces are published. It’s worth noting that the second spike took an hour from the time of the announcement – a lot shorter than for the papal resignation, where the second spike took more than two hours. Journalists anticipate the deaths of all public figures of a certain age, but the first papal resignation in 600 years meant substantial redrafting was in order.

We’ll follow up tomorrow with some more data on how this global story was distributed by its readers on social media.

Victor identifies what you might call the “Niagara Problem” – if there are more tweets than searches per second for a given hashtag, your chances of your tagged tweet being seen by a new audience are so slim as to be negligible, like a droplet in a waterfall.

He’s got a smart analysis that concludes that a single #SuperBowl tweet was probably visible only to those searching the hashtag within a window of about 1/17 of a second after the tweet was posted – any later and it disappears beneath the 166 other #SuperBowl-tagged tweets posted each second during the game. It’s certainly an issue for massive conversations that have always had this problem – but it ignores the incredible usefulness of hashtags in millions of smaller niches, and indeed their implications for the way we use language.

A Question of Attention Economics

This is simply a case of demand for attention exceeding supply – the problem isn’t intrinsic to the hashtag. So many people have so much to say about the Super Bowl that it induces 167 tweets per second – tweets without enough context or relevance to justify the average user reading them. It’s true that once a hashtag passes a certain frequency threshold it’s difficult to get a word in edgeways. But that’s always been the case for conversations where people are more interested in being heard than listening.

Hashtags can build a digital fence around a specific conversation topic.

Take a counterexample – one highlighted by Victor himself – a conference hashtag, which allows event attendees to join the discussion in real time, or just read a digest of the day’s events so far. Conferences, due to their smaller scale, have a much more balanced attention market. Tweets are likely to mostly come from attendees. Searchers include both attendees and those following proceedings from elsewhere. People are searching (supplying attention) because the tweets are likely to be confined to a particular area of interest. #SuperBowl is simply too large an event, and the audience too disparate, for there to be meaningful discussion between strangers – the ad hoc community formed around an event like a conference doesn’t exist between Super Bowl viewers.

Victor’s article presents #SuperBowl as the primary use case for hashtags – using a massive event with a huge audience as a vehicle to extend your reach. But the Super Bowl happens once a year, while tens of thousands of smaller events take place around the world every day, each with their own hashtag. Surely focusing on extraordinary cases like the Super Bowl and ignoring the long tail of smaller communities who gather around a hashtag each day is failing to see the wood for the trees.

#Context, #context, #context

Even when they’re not necessarily connecting a community, hashtags can serve as an efficient means of denoting the topic of a message. One word takes the place of an explanatory phrase, making communication more efficient: important when time or space is of the essence.

Supplying context is more important than ever on social media platforms because they allow your message to spread far further than anticipated. When you’re talking to an engaged audience, the context is generally understood, but when your message is amplified beyond the intended readership, it can be tough to get a grip on what, exactly, is under discussion. A short string of characters is often enough to make the indecipherable clear, even without clicking through.

Hashtags and language

Last week it was revealed that Facebook will be adding hashtag functionality to their platform, in an effort to sync up public conversations about a single topic. This isn’t just Facebook copying Twitter’s features – the hashtag is creeping into the internal logic of our language. People already use hashtags on Facebook even without the ability to click through, to denote a topic or context. It’s a new part of speech, designed for the search engine and the status update, which is genuinely innovative and useful.

The evolution of language – not just its words, but its structure and syntax – is determined by how we use it, and as communication increasingly takes place through computers and text, our language has begun to take advantage of the unique affordances of the medium – in this case, search and machine readability.

A hashtag (not just on Twitter – conceptually), allows you to point and contribute to the global public conversation around a topic, immediately giving you context beyond the particular snippet of information that led you there. It’s the first case of language designed for machines slipping into human discourse. It’s like linking to a source, except rather than static pages, the reader is plugged into a live conversation.

Is the way that Twitter searches hashtags perfect? No. Do people use them inefficiently, and sometimes idiotically? Without a doubt, yes. But viewing the social evolution of the hyperlink as a means to increase your audience is a pretty blinkered view of a fascinating innovation (which, it should be noted, was first invoked by a user rather than Twitter itself.)

Not to mention the article’s kicker – that hashtags are “aesthetically damaging”, which is pure neophobia. The hash has become a functional symbol of language, just like commas, ampersands and exclamation marks. I’ve never been a fan of the way the question mark looks myself, but what else do you use to indicate that you’re asking a question?

A fantastic investment tops today’s social headlines, with an old Chinese bowl bought for $3 making back $2.2 million, while the idea of forcing elected representatives to wear the logos of their corporate backers picks up steam. Elsewhere, gay rights continue to dominate the agenda as Upworthy provides a platform for a son of two dads to make the case for overturning California’s ban on gay marriage, and the news of Chipotle cancelling their sponsorship of Boy Scout events makes waves for the Huffington Post. In fourth today, the plight of military women and the risks they face from their own colleagues.

Think we missed a story? Let us know on #bulletlist.

We compiled this top five from stories published today, ranking by the top speed of each. Top Speed measures the maximum number of Twitter and Facebook interactions per hour each story received.

Data compiled using Spike. Facebook interactions are defined as the sum of likes, comments and shares on an article. If you have any questions, tweet at us @newswhip with #bulletlist.

Today in social news, we have a gay rights protester bringing the fight to hate group Westboro Baptist Church’s doorstep, an apparent escalation of the Syrian civil war, a recap of some of the more foolhardy mistakes made over the course of the Iraq war, and two footballing careers coming to a close.

Think we missed a story? Let us know on #bulletlist.

We compiled this top five from stories published today, ranking by the top speed of each. Top Speed measures the maximum number of Twitter and Facebook interactions per hour each story received.

Data compiled using Spike. Facebook interactions are defined as the sum of likes, comments and shares on an article. If you have any questions, tweet at us @newswhip with #bulletlist.

Rob Portman made big waves today by announcing a reversal in his position on gay marriage after his son came out, taking three of the top five spots on today’s list. Cavan Sieczkowski at The Huffington Post, meanwhile, wonders aloud whether Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, notorious for his homophobia, might actually be gay himself. Fifth in our list, and the only story not about someone’s sexuality, is a report from Russia Today about a UN report which chastises the US for its drone strikes in Pakistan.

Think we missed a story? Let us know on #bulletlist. Monday’s a bank holiday for St Patrick’s Day here in Ireland, so we’ll be back with the biggest stories every day on Tuesday.

We compiled this top five from stories published today, ranking by the top speed of each. Top Speed measures the maximum number of Twitter and Facebook interactions per hour each story received.

Data compiled using Spike. Facebook interactions are defined as the sum of likes, comments and shares on an article. If you have any questions or need any explanations, tweet at us @newswhip with #bulletlist.Bullet List: The Top Social News Stories for Monday 11th March

In the eternal battle between science and religion, it seems that science came out on top today – the news that the Higgs boson has been identified grabbed the attention of social media users more than the new Pope, taking the top two spots on our Bullet List today. Maddow Blog returns to the top five with another story about Paul Ryan’s budget plans, and another disastrous carnival cruise picks up fifth place.

Think we missed a story? Let us know on #bulletlist.

We compiled this top five from stories published today, ranking by the top speed of each. Top Speed measures the maximum number of Twitter and Facebook interactions per hour each story received.

Data compiled using Spike. Facebook interactions are defined as the sum of likes, comments and shares on an article. If you have any questions or need any explanations, tweet at us @newswhip with #bulletlist.Bullet List: The Top Social News Stories for Monday 11th March

Two interesting videos in today’s Bullet List – the first, a heartwarming video of a college student meeting his musical hero found on NPR, and the second, a video from UpWorthy highlighting some of the less progressive voices on immigration. Also from NPR we have a map of America’s “Food Deserts” – areas where fresh food isn’t easily accessible. The BBC’s story of Tesco’s expansion into restaurants takes the number 2 spot today, while another tale of political dishonesty rounds off the list with the Florida Times-Union’s story about the resignation of state Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll.

Think we missed a story? Let us know on #bulletlist.

We compiled this top five from stories published today, ranking by the top speed of each. Top Speed measures the maximum number of Twitter and Facebook interactions per hour each story received.

Data compiled using Spike. Facebook interactions are defined as the sum of likes, comments and shares on an article. If you have any questions or need any explanations, tweet at us @newswhip with #bulletlist.Bullet List: The Top Social News Stories for Monday 11th March

Paul Ryan’s budget has been today’s most-discussed news story so far, with USA Today’s piece grabbing the lion’s share of online attention to the document. Meanwhile, a vanilla story originally about Costco’s earnings was edited into social gold by adding the context of the CEO’s views on the national minimum wage, driving lots of discussion on Facebook. The Guardian’s fantastic interactive guide to papal candidates came in fourth, just behind the tragic story of a baby caught in a hail of bullets in Chicago. Meanwhile, Steve Benen at Maddow Blog continues his domination of the Bullet List with his fourth entry in less than a month.

Think we missed a story? Let us know on #bulletlist.

We compiled this top five from stories published today, ranking by the top speed of each. Top Speed measures the maximum number of Twitter and Facebook interactions per hour each story received.

Data compiled using Spike. Facebook interactions are defined as the sum of likes, comments and shares on an article. If you have any questions or need any explanations, tweet at us @newswhip with #bulletlist.

US partisanship has dominated the headlines so far today, as Steve Benen at MaddowBlog hits the Bullet List for the third time with a convincing argument against Paul Ryan’s Medicare plans. Meanwhile, Awr Hawkins at Breitbart got people talking with the news that gun control advocate and wife of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords turns out to enjoy a little time at the firing range in between rallies. Grantland makes its first appearance thanks to Rafe Bartholomew’s story on hateful college basketball players, while the news of a former Detroit mayor’s crimes and Suede’s new album round off the list.

Think we missed a story? Let us know on #bulletlist.

We compiled this top five from stories published today, ranking by the top speed of each. Top Speed measures the maximum number of Twitter and Facebook interactions per hour each story received.

Data compiled using Spike. Facebook interactions are defined as the sum of likes, comments and shares on an article. If you have any questions or need any explanations, tweet at us @newswhip with #bulletlist.

Ta-Nehisi Coates provides today’s top social story with a reflection on the latent racial biases that still divide societies, while the competition to be the UK’s Eurovision contender seems to have gripped people a little more than Kenya’s divisive election. A gun control screed from Andrew P. Napolitano and more tales of Chris Brown’s bad behaviour round out the top five.

Any big stories out there that you think should have made the list? Let us know on #bulletlist.

We compiled this top five from stories published today, ranking by the top speed of each. Top Speed measures the maximum number of Twitter and Facebook interactions per hour each story received.

Data compiled using Spike. Facebook interactions are defined as the sum of likes, comments and shares on an article. If you have any questions or need any explanations, tweet at us @newswhip with #bulletlist.