Social Data Kickoff

How about them Cowboys?

I’m sorry, Giants fans, but you’ve won in our house too many times lately not for me to give you a hard time when America’s team sticks it to ya.

The Giants had the most turnovers last night since 1987, and it showed. Every time I looked down at my Facebook wall, I looked back up again only to find Eli Manning wondering how the ball ended up in the hands of another Cowboy.

That’s okay, it’s early yet — it was the first game — but the smell of victory is sweet, especially against the Giants.

I’m apparently not the only one interested in monitoring my Facebook wall during football games, and so Facebook is announcing some new tools to assist news organizations (and marketers) in better understanding the real-time social data around such major events.

For example: According to The New York Times Bits Blog, the N.F.L. season start generated over 20 million likes, comments, and shares on Facebook by over 8 million people.

Knowing that 3 million people suddenly burst into an eruptive cheer of “Go Cowboys!” is, of course, invaluable market insight that media buyers up and down Madison Avenue can leverage to sell Jerry Jones more ad space for his Papa John’s commercials.

But I digress.

This is all really about trying to tamp down the Twitter real-time data stream onslaught which has only, oh let’s say, about a five-year headstart on Zuck and company.

And that is, of course, because the Twitter powers that be have tried to operate at least partially in the spirit of a more open social realm, allowing large proportions of their API to be generously offered up to the world at large.

Whereas Facebook, on the other hand, has held their API very close to the vest, letting piece parts be revealed to the greater world only when the underlying motivation of monetization looms largest.

Though the Facebook silly wabbit may have turned the faucet just enough to let some interesting drips slip out, it’s the lingering but stalwart Twitter turtle that’s best currently positioned to win the social data race.