On Wednesday, Twitter announced that its analytics dashboard will be available to all users, effective immediately. The analytics dashboard allows users to see how many people view their tweets and interacted with them in a variety of breakdowns such as gender, interest and location.
Absolutely thrilled to open up access to https://t.co/wcU6oj9hFM to EVERYONE. Check it out, and let us know what you think!
— Ian Chan (@chanian) August 27, 2014
The analytics tools were initially released in July but only made available to verified users, advertisers, and Twitter Card publishers. The tools are accessible to all users with accounts open for at least 14 days, and with tweets primarily in English, Spanish, French or Japanese. Nearly anything users can imagine is available, including the number of times others clicked on tweets, username or avatar. Additionally, all information is updated in real-time.
This information is incredibly useful data for every kind of user on Twitter such as politicians and businesses who want to know who is looking at their tweets, when they are interacting, and other sorts of important data that helps to plan for a more effective marketing strategy. However, some wonder if access to this sort of data could have negative effects for some individuals.
"I can imagine a near future where a lot of the human touch of Twitter is stripped away as users regularly check their stats, seeing what tweets are most popular and tweaking their 'strategy' to get more 'engagement' and reach a wider audience," wrote Martin Bryant, editor-in-chief at the Next Web.
Bryant expressed a legitimate concern but one that is an unavoidable consequence of the Internet. We need to discuss issues of personal responsibility when it comes to ensuring one's privacy on the Internet, and balancing real-life and online interactions. Advocates and opponents of Twitter's decision to release the analytics tools to the public can agree that exercising moderation is of the utmost importance.
To find out if the Twitterverse thinks you are important, click here and learn the horrifying truth in your analytics dashboard.
