Comparing @OUCisco to @OUCyberSec

Some of you who follow me (and therefore this blog) may be aware that I curate two distinct twitter accounts @OUCisco and @OUCyberSec. Each attracts an entirely different community with some level of technical crossover.

@OUCisco reaches out to Cisco Networking geeks and students primarily set at CCNA level there are some more advanced outputs during the summer. The twitter account and its other related social media profiles runs in sync with T216 an Open University Cisco CCNA module. It is designed to work with the October to June study calendar of our students - knowingly knowing that there are many others out there who also study the same programme in parallel.

@OUCyberSec runs in sync with our FutureLearn Introduction to CyberSecurity MOOC. It runs for eight weeks around four times a year. Like our @OUCisco offering, the outputs are designed to follow the set study of the module aware that there are many out there interested in the broad topic of CyberSecurity.

At the time of writing this blog, @OUCisco boasted 554 followers and @OUCyberSec 1344 - having started analysing the statistics for @OUCisco - there was merit in comparing the two communities.
Comparison of @OUCisco and @OUCyberSec

The data above is taken from January (Month 1) when we commenced the #FLCyber15 programme and is available up until the 20th of October (when the last snapshot was taken). @OUCisco is 40% of @OUCyberSec and has grown slower over a longer timescale. With @OUCisco active for two years prior to this data. @OUCyberSec is new and has been growing each time a new presentation of the FutureLearn MOOC has run.

From the data, we can surmise:

  • An initial hype surge in the @OUCyberSec MOOC which was linked to a Twitter which involved Cory Doctorow.
  • The data for @OUCisco is consistent - there is a surge in July around a series of #Periscope micro seminars.
  • August is always a quiet month - there are less tweets for @OUCisco, which picks up in September ready for the October norm.
  • @OUCyberSec goes in waves, in tandem with enrolment on the different MOOC presentations.
Two years of data will be wonderful and time will offer this, meanwhile I will collect the data every month and compare the two different social media communities.






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