The social angle on Money2020

Social is a big part of Money2020 (in both senses).

In a moment of mid-conference early morning jetlag I thought I'd run some numbers to see how much noise is being generated, by whom and to what impact.

Looking at data from August 4th to November 3rd, we found and analysed 27,000 relevant mentions - 92% of which were in microblogs (Twitter). Needless to say mentions spike up immediately prior to and during the conference.

Top hashtag by an order of magnitude is #money2020 at 13,200 mentions; followed by #bitcoin 3,416; #payments 576; #hackathon 536; #fintech 520 and #money 368. #ApplePay comes in at 232 and #Cryptocurrency at 216.

If you are only seeking broad exposure, rather than prompting dialogue, the takeaway is obvious. In fact, best to use an alias, and one or two hashtags for optimum pickup.

Exhibitors have been relentless at working the social channel, to the extent that key phrase analysis is skewed by what are clearly marketing messages. 'Bitcoin' comes out top but is rapidly followed by telling phrases including 'November', 'Booth', 'CEO' and 'Las Vegas'...

Who is winning the battle of the brands? See the chart below:

Apple (and ApplePay) is helped by the topicality of their recent news announcements. MasterCard's Hackathon in the build up to the conference was a smart, well timed move that gave them a strong wave of visibility heading into the start of the formal announcements.

While social has been worked hard by marketers - its that kind of conference, if you don't like networking, you are in the wrong place - there is also a lively Twitter backchannel between the usual suspect payments commentators and analysts. If snippets of insight or commentary are what you are after, that is the place to look for it.

And no, I didn't search specifically on the terms #Winklevoss and #money2020. I'll leave that to you.