Today the 2011 Measure Up conference kicked off in Boston, MA. If you were following along with the #muconf11 twitter stream, you probably saw an intensive and exciting knowledge exchange. For those who weren't following along, here were some of today's top tweets

johnlovett Monster's BI Vision: Data>Info>Knowledge>Intelligence is a blueprint for solid #measure strategies everywhere #MUCONF11

GuyPowell Foiled Cupcakes 93.7% through social media channels. Fantastic story on how to micro-target your audience #MUCONF11

rroussev #MUCONF11 When does social media become traditional?

johnlovett "Before you even get to #SocialMeasurement you need to be planning to determine what's important" *Key* fact from @vargasl #MUCONF11

bonniesituation #muconf11 More data =/= more useful data -- Kanishka Das, P&G

GuyPowell 4 reasons to talk about a product. great/bad product, need 4 recognition, desire to help others, great advertising.Very important #MUCONF11

ROIEvangelist Advertising has a negative effect on WOM and social media - Purush Papatla #MUConf11

stevengroves Being 'in the game' and just being 'in social' isn't enough any more - you need to engage - Jon Giegengack / CMB at #MUCONF11

VirtualMR Don't assume that you need to be social. You probably do but it is worth quantifying how much. (@cmbinfo) #muconf11 #cmo

vdeval the real growth opportunity for brands is friends of fans and not just fans @bruich #MUCONF11

Seeing as this was a conference focusing on analytics, I decided to play with one of the many free analytics tools available today, The Archivist, and take a look at the top influencers and topics of day one of #muconf11 statistically.

It's hardly surprising to see that conference chair Guy Powell was a top user of the hashtag. @VirtualMR and @JohnLovett were also top contributors. Many other attendees chimed in as well.

Next I looked at top words used in our twitter stream in order to identify hot topics. After the obvious words "Social" and "Media" amongst others, we see that Jon Giegengack of Chadwick Martin Bailey spurred conversation during his presentation "Due Diligence: Maximize the Return on your Social Media Investments" as did Kanishka Das of Procter & Gamble with "The Incremental Lift of Social Media on Traditional Media"

Lastly, I was curious which twitter platforms were popular amongst this crowd. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, as well as the regular web interface dominate on this chart, but some users were participating via Radian6, iPhone, Android, Ipad and even Facebook and Foursquare.

It's amazing how much data you can gather from even a free service like this. To view the full size Archivist graphics and more detail, click here.

What recurring topics and themes did you notice during day one of the event? Do you ever use free analytics like this for research? Share with us in the comments, or find us on twitter @MeasureUpIIR.

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a specialization in marketing. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com.