Almost three months since we flicked the switch and went live – how are things going? We’ve now had more than 70 million words submitted by users, and have had submissions from 28 different countries, as you can see above. One of the things we are doing is looking at uptake and use, and our settings mean that (if those using Textal allow) we can see where it has been used. About 2/3rds of users let us see this information, which is helpful to show the reach and spread of the App.
Other things to report. We’ve had wordclouds created in 6 different languages. The content being put through the server broadly breaks down to 1/3 books, 1/3 websites, and 1/3 searches from twitter, with a slight bias towards twitter, but this indicates the different needs of users (personally, I had predicted that the twitter search would be much more popular than the books, for example – showing we need to understand user needs more).
We’ve being going through phases of leaving Textal to its own devices, and then activitely engaging with social media about it, promoting it with various hashtags, at events. etc. Unsuprisingly, it ticks over when we dont promote it, and there are spikes in downloads when we are being more active.
To celebrate a succesful launch, and the ongoing success of Textal, we’re having a drinks event at UCL Centre for Digital Humanities on the 2nd of October. There are a few places left but they are going fast- do sign up here and join us in having a few drinks to toast our adventures!