Web Business by Ken Burbary

What the F**K is a Tweetup?

Since I joined Twitter, I have particpated in and organized numerous Tweetups. As the size of the Twitter population has grown, I’ve been asked by countless numbers of people, what is a Tweetup?

So, I decided to put this little set of slides together to answer that question. Enjoy!

Mine the Gold in Social Media through Conversation Search

Google has transformed our lives with its uncanny ability to answer the question, “What is X?”.   Enter any term and Google will tell you what it is and/or how it works. If Google’s spiders can find a web page, you can find the content within it using Google Search.

Enter Social Media.

The proliferation of real-time, mass conversation online is something that Google hasn’t done as good a job at keeping up with. Opportunistic individuals have taken advantage of this fact to create specialized conversation search engines. Currently they do the best job of finding “Who is talking about what, and where”.  There are many tools online that do this. Some, like Social Mention and Samepoint scour a large portion of the social media landscape, while others like Twitter Search focus on a single social network. For purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on demonstrating how you can use advanced features Twitter Search that often get overlooked.

Much like Google search, Twitter search is very straightforward. Enter a term and it will display a results page that shows all mentions of that term, or combination of terms, that are being discussed on Twitter. You can also search by Hashtag to view all Tweets with that tag. These features are only the tip of the iceberg that Twitter Search offers. By clicking the “Advanced Search” link, you’ll see a feature-rich search page that offers.

People Search

Is ideal if you:

• Want to find all tweets from your favorite Twitter personality
• Want to find all tweets to a particular person
• Want to find all tweets mentioning a particular person

These methods of searching can be useful if you want to catch up on a particular topic between people, follow all replies directed to someone, or  monitor buzz on a specific person.

Location Search

Ever wonder who else living  or working in your city is on Twitter? Enter your location and select the distance radius. You’ll most likely find other people, in some cases extremely close, near you that you had no idea about. It’s a great way to expand your Twitter network by adding new conections that bring new and different perspectives.

This method of searching can also be useful when attending conferences or other events, and you want to search & find which other Twitter users are near you.

Date Range Search

This is a great way to find that tweet that you loved but didn’t save, or couldn’t easily find because it happened  more than a day or two ago. Often times, you’ll have a conversation with someone and need to go back and reference one of the tweets. The date range search makes it easy. The only thing you need to remember is a rough idea of when the conversation occurred.

Attitude Search

Automating sentiment analysis has not yet perfected, even with the best natural language processing technologies on the market. Despite being imperfect, there are insights that can be revealed by experimenting with searches to uncover the positive or negative tones in the key topics. Try both, you may uncover something that really surprises you.

Link Search

This is one of my favorite search options. Remember, one of the primary reasons many people tweet is to share links that interest them, or links they think will be valuable to their network. Shared link tweets are an important way to keep up on news, trending topics, and key blog posts. It’s easy to miss links though, because Twitter conversations happen quickly. And your attention span cannot scale with the noise on Twitter. It’s simply not possible, even with tools like Tweetdeck. So, this search method makes it easy to catchup on what you missed.

Enter the username of the person you want to search for link tweets from and check the “Containing Links” box. You’ll be returned their tweets that only contain links. You can then easily scan the links without having to wade through all the conversation in between them.

You can take this even further, by subscribing to the RSS feed generated for any Twitter Search query. Add the feed URL to your favorite reader, and you will have automated your search. I use this method to keep up on link tweets from key folks I follow Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang, Mack Collier, Aaron Strout and Alan Wolk.

There are surely creative people out there that have invented more sophisticated ways to search twitter conversations, and you’re EXACTLY the people I want to hear from. Please share any power search tips you have!

7 random things ‘meme’

My friends Shannon Paul and Marc Meyer recently tagged me to be the next in line for a blog meme that says I need to outline seven random and/or weird things about myself. This ’7 random things meme’ has been going on for some time, but I’ve successfully avoided it until now. So, at the risk of humilating myself or giving you 7 reasons to never read this blog again, here goes!

1. I’m a Digital pack rat. I collect all forms of digital media. I keep just about every file saved on some form of media, anticipating when I will need it again in the future. I seem to constantly come up with reasons to “need” that email from the last job, installer for the program I don’t use anymore, articles/whitepapers that will come in handy again…….some day. Every so often I will admit defeat and purge, only to start building up my collection again.
2. I’m a closet geek. I like to tinker with technology. Ever since I got my first computer, back in the early/mid 80s, I’ve been taking things apart and putting them back together to better understand how things work. I was an early user of Compuserv, Prodigy, and active on many Bulletin Board Systems. I like to know the “how”.
3. I am an active wrestler. No, not professional WWE style, but with my young kids (3 of them). It’s a tradition that my dad started with me and my brother back when we were young. After Dad got home, we would “roughhouse” a bit and wrestle in the basement. It’s a fond memory of my childhood, and now something my kids enjoy with me. It’s wrestlemania some nights. Not 2 minutes after I get into the door after work and I am bombarded with “Can we play wrestle Daddy?” requests. I. Love. it.  (As I get older and they get bigger, my advantages are quickly diminishing)
4. I remember peoples faces. Always. I see someone I went to school with 20 years ago in a grocery store and recognize them. Someone I worked with 3 jobs ago at a gas station and immediately recall them. Most of the time they do not notice me, but I seem to always recognize them. So chances are, if we meet and I see you again, I’ll be sure to stop and say hi.
5. I was the pickiest eater in the world growing up. As a kid, I definitely lived in a “meat & potatoes” household. There wasn’t much exploring into new cuisines. As a result I was afraid to try new foods. That all changed in my early 20s and I leapt to the other end of the spectrum. I’m now a foodie. I love food. All different kinds of foods. I love to cook with them, experiment and try new combinations and dishes. If I could go back and do it all over again there is a good chance I would have gone to culinary school instead.
6. In college I sold my body (NO, not what you are thinking). I often traveled to another school on weekends to visit my girlfriend (and now wife). However, I was broke and had no car. So I took the bus. I had to get creative with ways to fund my “true love” and pay greyhound. For a semester, until I found a better job, I donated blood plasma for $25 per donation (coincidentally the donation center was located right next to the bus station) to pay for my transportation and food expenses for the weekend. Yuck. Double Yuck.
7. I’m a World War II history nut. I have an insatiable appetite for knowledge on the topic. I have many books and movies covering that genre/era. I’m fascinated by it. I’m the guy that gets excited by the time-life commercials advertising the “never before seen” black-and-white footage of the european or pacific campaigns during WWII, and for a limited time only. Call now! Yeah, that’s me. Hook. Line. Sinker.

Hopefully you haven’t wet yourself or strained a facial muscle from laughing too hard. Now it is time for me to designate some others to take the 7 random things walk of shame.

I tag:

• Adam Cohen
• Stacy Lukas
  
• Blagica Bottigleiro
• Shauna Nicholson
• Warren Sukernek
• Gennefer Snowfield
• Terry Bean

Here are the rules for my fellow bloggers:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Updated: I removed Aaron Strout from the “tagged” list because he had already been tagged, and added Stacy Lukas