James Ruotolo at FraudPro found Knowem to be a good way to find what social sites have a particular user name. I’m going to add this to my list of ways for Finding Usernames.
Tag Archive for 'Social Sites'
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Microsoft to Data-Mine Facebook & Twitter
Microsoft has cut non-exclusive deals with both Facebook and Twitter for Bing.
Microsoft has cut non-exclusive deals with both Facebook and Twitter for Bing to search their real-time data feeds. Google has followed suit at least with Twitter, but Facebook is the prize because it has like 40 million updates a day from its 300 million users. Not all Facebook updates will be searched by Bing, however, only the ones made available to the wider public. Facebook, where Microsoft has an equity stake, will apparently provide users with a numbers of new tools to do so. It is unclear how much Microsoft is paying. The Twitter integration is already in beta. The deals suggest that Twitter, which has raised $155 million in venture capital, will see its first revenue since ads will follow. Terms were not disclosed.
Microsoft’s stake in Facebook may give us some interesting tools for searching Facebook in the near future.
I came across this interesting directory of social networks: http://www.social.com/Social-Networking/. This seems to have in excess of 500 listings for social network sites in something like 100 categories.
Many of the listed sites aren’t social sites like Facebook or MySpace. I wasn’t quite sure how I might use this, so I Googled it, and found an interesting use for it in ResearchBuzz.
According to ResearchBuzz, “Google Sets allows you to specify a couple of different things and get lists of additional similar things”, and I have been using it to help me build searches and find stuff for awhile. Sometimes I wonder how some things get into the set list, but it is good to play around with the new toys from Google.
These searches will help you to find people associated with a company or find a subject’s co-workers.
Start with Twitter’s Find People. Search for the company name. A long list of followers of the company Tweets might be very enlightening.
Search the Twitter Profiles using Twellow by searching for the firm name, web site URL or other relevant search terms.Sometimes former employees appear in the results and may prove to be useful interview subjects.
LinkedIn is one of the most used social networking sites. Use Google to search LinkedIn for Twitter references with a search term such as site:linkedin.com company name. twitter to the search string to find twitter feeds. Do the same search using Bing and Yahoo.Then redo all the searches for FaceBook and MySpace and any other social network site that might be useful.
Use TweepSearch to search the Twitter name of someone and then index the bios of all the users they are following or are following them. Once you have them indexed, you can do a keyword search using relevant search terms. The results may lead you to the bios of additional members of the firm for which the subject works.
Seven social network security mistakes
While it’s impossible to escape every social networking threat out there, there are steps one can take to significantly reduce the risks
Seeking a sugar daddy has never been easier.
Reports exist of the most beautiful women on the site, some of whom he had written to but they had not responded until the day after the subscription ran out, emailing the guy after his subscription lapsed.
When we first saw Seeking Arrangement, a site for rich gents seeking companionship, mentioned in the media and in press releases, we thought it was just another dating scam. Then we realised that if you had a rich guy or a potential gold-digger as a subject that this might hold some promise, but not for its original purpose. An associate proved that with a little guile and ingenuity you can identify an investigation subject in this thing.
Mocospace is similar to Myspace, except it is for dating and casual sexual encounters. Some of the profiles are definitely x-rated. It is also a large social network with a claimed 6 million subscribers. It’s real interesting when you find the subject of an investigation in this social network site. If you know the subject’s mobile phone number, then that is the best search term.
Walmart was permitted by the Colorado courts to subpoena Facebook, Myspace and Meetup.com for the profiles of several employees that were suing the retailer regarding work related injuries.
I wrote about a similar Canadian case that established that what you find in Google, other search engines, and unrelated Facebook pages may be used as the basis for a motion for the production of the subject’s entire Facebook page as happened in KOURTESIS V. JORIS (2007). Another Canadian case is Murphy v. Perger, [2007] O.J. No. 5511 (S.C.J.) (QL). These cases are becoming more common and of greater significance as social sites become a larger part of our lives.
FriendFeed, allows people to aggregate their activities across the social web. It is a great place to find what sorts of things people are talking about. In some ways, FriendFeed is better for “real-time” web searches than Twitter because a FriendFeed search will not only return Twitter posts, but also shared RSS feeds, Facebook status updates, items posted natively in FriendFeed itself, stories being promoted on social news web sites like Digg.com, and much more. However, unlike Twitter, FriendFeed’s user population is smaller and tends to consist of people who are more technology-focused, so the results will be somewhat skewed in that direction.Although useful, searching FriendFeed today still leaves a lot to be desired. That’s where FriendDeck can help. After authenticating with your FriendFeed username and remote key, you can kick off searches from the box at the top of the FriendDeck window. Each search term will then display in its own column within FriendDeck. The end result is a web app that very much resembles the TweetDeck’s desktop application, which also lets you display search terms in columns. However, unlike FriendDeck, TweetDeck additionally lets you organize your Twitter friends into groups in order to follow and track different sets of users along with your search queries.
FriendDeck is a web-based interface for searching the social web aggregation service, FriendFeed. It can also be downloaded and used as an Adobe AIR desktop application. FriendDeck isn’t based on TweetDeck. However, you can also search Twitter from inside FriendDeck. Use the command twitter:search term
FriendDeck displays search results in columns, allowing you to track multiple search terms within the same window. As the individual items appear, you have the option of clicking “like” or commenting online on the postings.
What FriendDeck Won’t Do
Unfortunately, FriendDeck only allows monitoring of searches, not groups. Perhaps because FriendFeed already includes a “lists” feature, FriendDeck’s creator didn’t include the ability to simultaneously track different groups of people. That’s disappointing, since tracking lists (groups) on FriendFeed means having to constantly switch between them to see the latest news from each group. I would like an application that tracks lists, rooms, and search terms.
What FriendDeck Can Do
That said, there are still a couple of tricks you can do with FriendDeck in order to see more than just traditional searches. You can also:
- See a user’s likes – type in the query likes:{username}
- See a user’s comments – type in the query comments:{username}
- See a user’s friends – type in the query friends:{username}
- A list of posts relating to a URL – type in the query url:{url.com}
- A list of posts about a domain – type in the query domain:{domain}
Although those custom queries are certainly handy, I would like to see FriendDeck do more.
Aardvark emerges: Social search that works
Aardvark is social search meets instant messaging, which is a clever marriage. You send a query to Aardvark via your instant-messenger client. The system figures out which people in your network (friends and friends of friends) might be able to answer it for you, sends them messages, and then forwards you the replies.
In its early stage of development, it connects to AIM, GTalk, and Windows Live Messenger, but not to Yahoo IM. It also connects to Facebook…
Aardvark will open to the public “in a few months.”
Following breaking news stories using Twitter is a lot faster than aggregation sites like Google or Yahoo News. The TweetNews search tool ranks search results based on Twitter links. It follows Yahoo News and compares its headlines with news story links on Twitter updates. A story’s popularity amongst the tweeting masses will push the story up in the TweetNews results. See Zooie’s Blog for more details.
TweetNews uses the Yahoo! Build your Own Search Service (Boss). This provides a clean search API that turns off the usual restrictions that control the presentation of the results. For example, it allows you to re-rank results and include external content without having to cite Yahoo! for the search results.
Tweet Scan is a microblog search site that tries to organize it all.
Services indexed by Tweet Scan:
- identi.ca
- The TWIT Army Canteen
- bleeper.de
- fun.ohhh.no
- Suffice to Say
- Lareta.net
- Linux Outlaws
- MicroCiaran
- Pawwer
This Tweet search business is becoming quite a crowded market. I’m starting to wonder if searching using anything but Twitter Search is really worth the time and effort.
YackTrack is a Beta search engine that allows one to search for references and comments to a specific URL (in the Home tab) across multiple social networks. This might be good for tracking reactions and responses to such things as a product launches or PR efforts. The URL reference search currently supports Blogger/Blogspot, Digg, Disqus, FriendFeed, Google Blog Search, Google Reader, Identi.ca, IntenseDebate, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, TypePad/MoveableType and WordPress blogs.
It also has a keyword search, called Chatter (in the Chatter tab). The Chatter search currently supports Mixx, Identi.ca, Technorati, Google Blog Search, FriendFeed and Twitter.
The keyword search seems to work much better than the URL search. This is probably because most people use something like tinyurl.com to truncate URL’s.
Twitter Etiquette: 5 Dos and Don’ts
Like any social network, the Twitter community has its own set of unwritten guidelines – or etiquette – that dictates good (or bad) behavior on the service. Some people call it Twittequette.
The Dark Side of Twitter: What Businesses Need to Know
As companies tighten their ad spending, inexpensive social media is clearly the next marketing frontier. As with any new craze, there are enormous opportunities—and large pitfalls that must be avoided.
For this article, I spoke to some marketing professionals who’ve been exploring the Twitter terrain for a while. My quest was to identify the Twitter landmines so you can fast-track your adventure into this vast new frontier.
A style guide for Twitter will hit iTunes by the end of the month, the New York Times reports. The e-book, 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form, will lay out key style points from the Twitter canon,
New Social Site Category
I created a category for social sites and put all relevant articles into this category. I’ve been writing about this part of the Internet since February 2007.
High Noise to Signal Ratio
The social sites are a source of pain for researchers, as they are hard to search, and the noise to signal ration is extremely high. An example of how difficult searching this stuff really is may be found at ResearchBuzz where Tara Calishian explains her approach to searching Twitter. She also has an article regarding an excellent Twitter Venn Diagram search result mapping tool.