The Republican Party broke new social media ground at it National Convention in Tampa, Florida last month by blanketing its convention hall in real-time tweets. Now, Mass Relevance, the firm that facilitated that Twitter initiative is making custom platforms developed for the RNC, Pepsi and other brands available as a set of templated products.
As an official Twitter partner, Mass Relevance has access to Twitter’s data-laden firehose. The firm filters posts and images from Twitter and helps brands and organizations surface that information and content in meaningful ways. For the RNC’s Convention Without Walls, for example, Mass Relevance categorized millions of tweets prompted by the event’s speakers and other messaging, organizing them according to pre-planned criteria as well as reactionary filters that were determined as the event took place.
The end result was a stream of select tweets that were displayed on the convention website as well as on large physical backdrops behind the stage (seen in photo here) and digital “ribbons” surrounding the convention forum. The goal was to have Twitter content that reflected issues being discussed on stage – the economy for instance – presented as speakers talked about them.
“The challenge is how do you take four million tweets and put structure to it,” said Zac Moffatt, digital director for Mitt Romney’s campaign, which was closely involved in the convention. Mass Relevance helped the RNC take “a tweet occurring thousands of miles away and in a few minutes have it appear on a stage,” he said. “[Mass Relevance] embedded staff with us for the week,” during the August convention, added Moffatt.
The company worked with Barack Obama’s White House on its Twitter Town Hall last year. It’s also powering CNN’s Election Insights, a partnership with Facebook that measures how many people are discussing the presidential and vice presidential candidates, where they live, and their genders, in addition to displaying related comments from Facebook users.
Moffatt told ClickZ last week the Romney campaign is “really interested in working with Mass Relevance,” and is “trying to figure out ways to partner with them in the debates and beyond.” He said the RNC also used This Moment to build the video player on its convention YouTube channel. In addition, the Romney camp is working with social community discussion platform Wayin, he said.
“We’re talking to the campaigns,” said Mass Relevance founder and CEO Sam Decker.
But it’s not all politics. Mass Relevance has also developed social content projects for GE, Pepsi, Fox, Patagonia, Major League Baseball and other corporate brands.
Outdoor gear maker Patagonia uses Mass Relevance to highlight tweets from people employing the #BecauseILove hashtag, part of Patagonia’s Vote the Environment effort which encourages people to register to vote and raise awareness about environmental issues. FOX Sports Media Group worked with the social platform company to create fan photo walls, polls and leaderboards.
The idea, said Decker, is to integrate social media into all channels, from websites and mobile environments to TV, outdoor and brick-and-mortar retail. “This is what I believe is the next area for social,” Decker told ClickZ last week, “How do you integrate it?”
The Mass Relevance Product Studio offers more than 30 products and what the firm calls “visualizations,” like photo walls and polls that reflect social interactions and sentiment.