Twitter Tip
Yes, we all know that twitter is used as a mini-blogging platform through which you can see what friends, colleagues, peers, strangers, etc. are doing right now.
But, like with many things, it’s even more interesting to take a step back and be able to see the whole picture… By examining the collective, trends quickly become apparent. And search.twitter.com allows you to do just that.
Simply go to the site (search.twitter.com), type in a search term, and you’ll see recent tweets from twitter users that contain the term. In addition to simply browsing through the results, you can also create an RSS feed and/or a twitter post for the results.
For the past couple days, I’ve been searching for “red sox” and it’s been really interesting to eavesdrop on this aggregated conversation. For example, the number of posts that cheer on the Red Sox far outnumber those that mention them unfavorably. What does this mean? That Red Sox fans are more likely to use Twitter than other MLB fans? Or, more likely, simply that Red Sox fans are more passionate about their team winning than non-Red Sox fans are about the Red Sox losing.
Another thing that I really like about the site is that it displays the most frequently twittered terms. This is great for bringing attention to a topic I may have overlooked. Right now, the results are Halloween, Plumber, SNL, Michigan, Liberty Mermorial. The first four make sense to me: Halloween is coming up soon, Plumber is obviously a reference to the presendential debates, SNL is on people’s minds because Sarah Palin will be appearing, and Michigan football is winning a game they were expected to lose. I clicked on “Liberty Memorial” and it turns out that Obama is speaking tonight in Kansas City, Mo, tonight and people are pretty excited. That’s something I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Twitter search really is a great way to quickly see what has people talking, and how those people feel about the topic.
The future of facebook
I have been a big Facebook fan since I joined the site in September 2004 (almost three years ago!). And while there have a few bumps along the road, I think generally the social networking site has done a great job at engaging its users. In fact, although these new applications (features like “food fight” – where you can “throw” food at another person so that the image shows up on their profile or “iread” – where you can post which books you have read, are reading and would like to ready) have threatened Facebook’s clean interface, as one of my friends pointed out, they made Facebook much more interesting and time consuming. Now, in addition to just reading information on other people’s profiles, there’s much more that one can do on this site.
One of my projects in my business strategies course (a separate one from the marketing course I took with a similar name and theme), was to analyze a company – complete with a SWOT, a competitor analysis, and a prediction for the future. I don’t remember all the conclusions, but I do remember saying that Facebook will need to adapt to serve its growing – and growing up – population and that it should stay independent of the “big players” and go public on its own.
This blog post suggests that – looking to the future – Facebook should expand its offerings to become a whole portal like Yahoo!, Google and others. In my opinion, this would completely revolutionize the websphere once again. Not only would it increase Facebook time and usage (instead of going to gmail to send e-mails, I can simply stay on Facebook) as well as ease (again, by the integration of different services), but it would also expand its network and appeal to more people (if all my friends are using Facebook e-mail, I need to sign up for Facebook to be able to use it, also).
Who knows that the future might bring? I look forward to finding out!
Google to Buy Facebook?
I’m sure many big companies are envious of the constant publicity that seems to surround Facebook. It’s like the cool kid who always had the attention, but never seemed to put any effort into being cool… (And isn’t that the key to being cool – making it seem effortless?) Everywhere I turn (surf), there’s a Facebook mention.
Anyway, this post about the possibility of Google buying Facebook made me happy. If Facebook has to grow up and become an adult, at least it should do it under Google’s wing – not Yahoo!’s.
