Manifest (Melbourne Anime Festival) is currently on this weekend and I set myself a task to suss out what people were thinking about the convention via twitter on the Friday and Saturday. I culled data from the hashtag #manifest and heavy filtering with ‘manifest’ and this is what I got.
BASIC SUMMARY
471 tweets, including retweets
100 twitter accounts
27283 readership reach
TOP WORDS TWEETED
Not surprisingly, the top five (relevant) tweeted words were:
- Cosplay
- Going
- Awesome
- #anime
- photos
A convention just isn’t a convention when people aren’t dressed up. Attendees really like to spread the word (going to the con!) and have an affinity to the word awesome to describe something they like.
SENTIMENTS
Majority of tweets lied in either positive or neutral; and stayed consistent between the two days. Sentiments were all manually labelled, considering the majority of the demographic like to be sarcastic and describe failings as a positive thing.
Some of the top keywords surrounding positive sentiments include:
- Cosplay
- Pocky
- Gundam
- #animeidol
- Press
Attendees get really excited over Pocky; and I believe the Gundam is related back to the Pocky one, as explained further down. An #animeidol hashtag started and people seemed to enjoy the event; and a lot of people loved bragging about getting press passes.
The words used in negative sentiments was pretty interesting. To summarise:
- Body odour
- Some people weren’t particularly pleased with guest Spike Spencer
- Queues and waits
- Traders
These would be the things the organising committee will probably address for their next show.
MOST RETWEETED IMAGE
The Pocky Gundam via @DYoshii http://yfrog.com/n0v4qtj. It’s pretty neat.
TOP TWEETERS
by Frequency
by Impact
3 NOTABLE TWEETS
someone here smells so bad that i’m feeling sick. thanks asshole. #manifest #everyconever – elizabethdanger
—
cosplay photographers are the best people. the press pit at the #manifest cosplay comp is awesome!! xd2 – neilcreek
—
This one is a personal favourite; best cross over tweet between the election and manifest 🙂
The entire Yaoi panel at #manifest seems to have voted for @aussexparty. Probably not a huge surprise. #ausvotes – ctudball
CONCLUSIONS TO MAKE
Whoever thought of the Pocky Gundam deserves a medal, cosplay is probably the most important element to the show and deodorant companies need to take note of this market!
Plasmo and the Infinite Sadness 
“Social media expert” ? =)
Far from it. Taking a step back from trading at conventions and instead just looking at the social media presence of conventions. I think by next year it's going to get more interesting, so might as well get started now 🙂