BLKBXLabs, DataRank Join Forces for Team Baber Website

Northwest Arkansas

by Talk Business & Politics ([email protected]) October 23, 2015 1:41 pm 147 views 

Two Fayetteville tech companies recently teamed up to create a social media data aggregating website for Twitter posts mentioning local country singer-songwriter Barrett Baber, currently a contestant on NBC’s “The Voice.”

Creative agency BLKBXLabs enlisted the help of social analytics company DataRank to create the site, which displays real-time data around the use of the hashtag “#teambaber.”

“[Co-founder and CEO] Ryan Frazier and [former lead developer*] Addam Hardy over at Datarank have been friends and co-workers of mine for many years,” said BLKBXLabs founder and CEO Joey Nelson. “I called them up and asked if they would be a part of the idea since they had the social media access to Twitter’s firehose. They liked the idea and the promotion of an aspiring musician from NWA.”

(*Editor’s note: According to LinkedIn, Hardy became the lead software engineer at Seattle-based Simply Measured in September. Simply Measured recently acquired DataRank.)

“It was just a fun collaboration between the two companies,” Nelson said.

As of about 1 p.m. on Friday, there were about 144,000 tweets about season 9 of “The Voice” and about 15,000 tweets with the Baber hashtag, according to the website.

It also breaks the data down by demographics.

According to the page, 72 percent of the #teambaber tweeters are female, and 40 percent are between the ages of 18 and 24.

By far, Arkansas was the top user of the “#teambaber” hashtag, followed by Tennessee, Texas, Florida and New York.

“If Baber makes it to the live rounds of the show we plan to add a few updates to the site to make it even more engaging and allow fans to connect with him even more,” said Nelson, who has been working with Baber for a few months, since he was notified he would be on the show.  

“He wanted us to evolve his image and brand and develop some new merchandise for him, so we worked on some new logos, brand marks and T-shirt designs for him,” Nelson said. “He was so pleased with our work, he invited the team to his concert in Gulley Park. We were blown away by how good he sounded and really just wanted to rally around him and help him out.”