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Egyptian 'Social Mirror' lets users analyze their personal Twitter and Facebook accounts

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Egyptian 'Social Mirror' lets users analyze their personal Twitter and Facebook accounts

Egyptian social media analytics startup 25trends just launched a new “Social Mirror” service, allowing individuals to get a detailed readout on their own Twitter and Facebook relationships and engagement.

We last spoke with 25trends founder Karim Ouda when he released his first report on how Egyptians are using social media. Since then he has steadily been selling his social media analytics report services to Egyptian companies to give them a better gauge of their social engagement.

But now that he’s generating money by selling these reports, he's also launching one of his original ideas: individual social analytics. “A year ago I wanted to see the value of social media analytics for me, personally," he explains. "So I thought, why don’t we analyze social data to figure out what your life is about, to give you an impression of your overall topics and relationships. This is why it’s called the social mirror."

The social mirror service, available for Twitter and Facebook, shows users who they interact with most, their peak hours for using each network, and the major topics they discuss. On Facebook, the mirror even tells you who you generally agree with and also lists those you often have opposing views with, although they are still working out some kinks; when I tested it, it told me that one of my friends both agreed and disagreed with me on a regular basis. The service also ranks users as a generally positive, negative, or neutral person, depending on 25trends’ internal algorithm, which is based partly on identifying keywords. Ouda spent a week researching how to craft the service and two weeks of intensive development to get it to where it is today.

Although Ouda couldn’t share the full details of the startup, he seems to be moving forward, recently porting some of his free services to paid. But, he admits, some of his friends remain wary testing out the new Social Mirror.

Privacy is still a concern

Even amongst those who he asked to try the service, Ouda found that people were reluctant to grant 25trends access to their Facebook accounts. Though the website clearly states that they will not save any personal information, Ouda can see through Google analytics that only about 40% of those who click on the Social Mirror site actually go through the entire analysis; the other 60% stop before granting permission to access their Facebook account. “I see people come to the first page, but when Facebook asks them to allow 25trends to access your data, they don’t continue,” he says.

(See Wamda’s discussion on internet and social media privacy here.)

“People are afraid,” he admits, adding that he has seen about 120 users try it out since their launch earlier this month. Although the service is free and seemingly offers no monetary value for the startup, Ouda shared that the ultimate goal is to collect large anonymous data sets to create meaningful reports about the Egyptian market, recording average age, location, favorite content type, likes, and peak activity times.

If he can get enough people to try it out, this sort of data could be very useful for brands seeking to reach the Egyptian market. As a one-man team, Ouda has certainly poured a huge amount of work into both his business and individual services; if he can overcome privacy concerns and educate his market about the anonymity of the data, the information he’s collecting could be extremely useful to business on the whole.

To start, Ouda recently released an analysis of the top 15 influencers on Twitter in Egypt as of June 2013. Comedian Bassem Youssef is at the top of the list with the highest amount of retweets and followers, likely due to his recent scrap with the government and subsequent international exposure for his nightly program Al Bernameg.

Ouda still has some bugs to work out in the platform, but he’s determined to push on and expand his services across Egypt. Those who are curious can check out the Social Mirror here; what do you think? Is information about your social media use important enough to you that you use third party analytics services? 

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