{"id":8298,"date":"2023-08-28T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T20:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/?p=8298"},"modified":"2023-08-28T13:05:01","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T20:05:01","slug":"two-announcements-sparktoro-v2-coming-soon-and-brendan-hufford-temporarily-joining-the-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/two-announcements-sparktoro-v2-coming-soon-and-brendan-hufford-temporarily-joining-the-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Announcements: SparkToro V2 Coming Soon and Brendan Hufford (Temporarily) Joining the Team"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How is it only August? It feels like two years since January. Especially here at SparkToro, where the year\u2019s had so much upheaval, despite our attempts to maintain Chill Work<\/a>. Shortly after our pricing change in February<\/a>, Twitter\/X\u2019s new owner announced a bevy of pricing and access changes to their API, including the deprecation of data SparkToro\u2019s infrastructure relied on for our following graph (and, even worse, destroying the data-and-connection rich ecosystem Twitter provided for the prior 14 years). We had a big year planned: the expansion of Audience Tracking, a host of new persona-building features, and our first in-person SparkTogether<\/a>. But the world\u2019s richest man seemed intent on throwing monkey wrenches in those plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I (Amanda) was two months pregnant. And as much as we wanted 2023 to be the in-person debut of SparkTogether<\/a>, we felt it prudent to keep it to a virtual summit. Casey Henry (our CTO) had to cancel his own plans in favor of a complete architectural rebuild \u2013 a project we\u2019ve named \u201cSparkToro V2.\u201d We\u2019ve been working with Asia Orangio of DemandMaven<\/a> on some deep customer research (thanks to everyone who took our V2 survey and the dozens of folks who\u2019ve had customer interviews) and with 5FourDigital<\/a> on a new UI for V2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, as we approach the end of summer, all of these projects are nearing fruition. And instead of the dread we (well, at least Rand) felt in the Spring, we\u2019re honestly excited about it. If we were a venture-backed company, we\u2019d be in trouble. Our metrics since April are frustratingly flat. But, since we\u2019re not in VC-world, and remain profitable, our stress is quite low. Instead, we\u2019re heads down, building something better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. SparkToro Version 2 Launches Soon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve worked through wireframes, data types, UI\/UX, and user-testing. We\u2019ve signed new data partnerships. Casey has rebuilt the infrastructure from the ground up. Instead of just social follower\/following relationships, we\u2019ve got clickstream panels, keyword+ranking relationships, cross-visitation, and more. We\u2019re <90 days away from launch, and SparkToro is about to get a whole lot better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, Twitter served as our primary connector network to validate\/verify audience data. With a Twitter identity, especially those that link to other networks, we got a lot of rich information about tens of millions of online folks\u2019 interests, posts, and demographics. But no more. Even if Elon hadn\u2019t killed the public APIs, the behavior of Twitter\u2019s users has shifted so much that an index of that site\u2019s activities is no longer useful to our marketing audience. Twitter was always ~30-40% culture, politics, and social content, but in 2023, that percent noticeably doubled. Gardeners don\u2019t join Twitter to follow gardening sources. Authors don\u2019t join Twitter to network with other authors. Today, people join Twitter to engage in hot-button issue fights and, embarrassingly, talk mostly about Twitter, the owner himself, and attempt to dunk-on\/fight-with one another. It\u2019s just not a place where rich interest and intent data can be found anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, SparkToro is evolving to use a combination of three primary data sources:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Cross-visitation and traffic data from clickstream sources<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. A LinkedIn-centric social graph with additional data from 15 other networks (including our historic Twitter data, and possibly more Instagram\/Threads\/Fediverse-centric in the years ahead)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Keyword and ranking data sourced from Google\u2019s SERPs<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    By aggregating these sources, we can show not just what an audience follows or posts about, but which websites they visit, what keywords they search for, and what skills, interests, and demographics they possess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Why is this better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n