You can now see what’s being said inside your city.

Twitter has over 55 million status updates per day. That is a ton of data that is being published online what’s happening right now. With more and more users using mobile devices to post status updates, and with more users opting in to include their location with their Tweets – more and more of the 55 million updates are being tagged with a location. This is going to spawn interesting tools for internet users.

One of these tools was recently launched in the form of Sency for Cities (http://sency.com/cities.php). This tool, allows anyone to see what’s being said right now by people inside of Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, London, New York City, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, & Washington DC. So, when there is a topic that you want to get the publics thoughts on – you can now do that by performing a search at one of these city centric engines. Sency for Cities also shows you what’s hot right now in each city via 10 current trends listed under the search box. Lastly, this initiative will show you where people are at right now based on recent status updates in a city that provide an actual location.

All of this data can you help you learn more about what is going on right now inside of a city. It is also interesting to compare the current sentiment in your city with what the mood is in a rival city. Or, when a new movie comes out – you may be curious what all people are saying about it – but Sency for Cities can also show you what people in your city – are saying about it right now.

As time goes on – this data will get even more rich. You will eventually be able to see what’s being said at actual locations as opposed to just inside a specific city. And as the data becomes more targeted and helpful – more uses will come out of real time location search. But the great thing about it is that it’s different for everyone, so a way you utilize and learn from it may be extremely different from how the next person uses it.

The plan is for more cities to be added to Sency for Cities – so down the line – more people can see what’s going on inside of their respective city.

Post written by Evan Britton, founder of Sency

Post from: Social Media Vision

Sency for Cities

CRUSH – Your one and only source for juicy social media news in four minutes or less. Don’t forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter, and get your daily crush at www.commonsensenms.com

As promised, we’ve got the latest on the debate heating up over Facebook privacy. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer is adding fuel to the fire, asking the FCC to provide privacy guidelines for social networks. Schumer believes “The default policy should be one of privacy, and users should be in control of how they choose to share their information, not the other way around.” This “opt-out” to “opt-in” transition sounds smart to us, but check out the Senator’s Facebook page to find out what everyone else is saying and to put in your own two cents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFWAmMXmIiw

Taking a more active approach, a group in Germany expressed their concern over “privacy invasions” by sabotaging a Google “Street View” car. The Google employee returned to find the tires let down and the camera cables slashed. However, the protestors were kind enough to leave behind the informative note, “Please do not drive away, you have a puncture”.

And perhaps these privacy issues are the source of anxiety and worry bringing an influx of users to the site “Blah Therapy”. This new website pairs random strangers together as “venters” and “listeners”, however, when we tried to unload our feelings the site was down due to an overload of users.

But our epic privacy FAIL comes courtesy of Blippy, a social media site that lets users share with friends what they purchase. Several credit card transactions were visible via a simple Google search, exposing detailed information including amount spent, specific location, and full credit card number. While we hate to say it, we predicted this case of “TMI” from the beginning.

In Twitter news, a new report by Edison Research and Arbitron reveals that while the awareness of Twitter among Americans has increased from 5% to 87% in the past two years, the population is still struggling to find a reason to use it as only 7% of Americans are active users.

However, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has now joined the 140-character brigade in hopes of spreading Bolvarian Revolution. And if Chavez, who had recently declared Twitter “a tool for terror”, can be converted to the dark side, maybe Twitter still has a chance.

In an attempt to aggregate all the “Like’s” around the world, Facebook has created the new website likebutton.me. The site operates as a directory of “likes”, showing what your friends and the rest of the world have deemed most important from popular web sites, such as YouTube, New York Times and Pandora.

And that brings us to our CRUSH OF THE WEEK – we are taking on the serious epidemic sweeping the globe, “Internet Valleygirlification”. With Facebook only allowing a “like option” our freedom of expression is confined into a simplistic, 4-letter, click of affirmation. So that’s why we are hitting the pavement for the CRUSH Road Trip 2010. Don’t worry, we will find out what American’s really have to say and of course share all the juicy with you.

Post from: Social Media Vision

CRUSH: Road Trip 2010

CRUSH is a fast and fun weekly round-up of social media news – Join us on Facebook to keep up with all the latest.

What was this week’s theme among your favorite social networking sites? Change. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are all rolling out a handful of new features. Including Twitter’s addition of “most popular tweets” to its search capability, a new interactive layout for YouTube, and the introduction of language alterations and community pages from Facebook.

Facebook was especially busy, as it also acquired “Divvyshot”, a program that will allow users to tag photos by event. You can expect to see this application in the upcoming months. Music artist John Forte has already gotten a head start on how this might work, pausing mid-set during his latest tour stop in Boston to snap a photo for his morning Twitter feed.

More politicians are beginning to find audiences via social media. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is reaching out to his constituents on Facebook. He follows New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, who did a live stream chat courtesy of the Live Free of Die Alliance a few months ago.

But beware, the power of social media is a double-edged sword. Just ask the RNC, as the release of controversial financial records and activities have been blasted to the public by an army of bloggers, as well as a video mashup of RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s speeches to Fat Joe’s music video “Make It Rain”.

On a lighter note, April Fool’s Day did not go by unnoticed. Here’s a list of Mashable’s favorite pranks from this year.

And of course, we couldn’t resist pulling a prank of our own, which brings us to our CRUSH of the Week. Haven’t heard of a Rick Roll? Let us introduce you…

Post from: Social Media Vision

CRUSH: Rick and Roll

There will always be critics, haters and naysayers out there in the real world and online world.

How many times have we heard sayings like:

“I don’t care what people are doing or where they are going, don’t tell the world on Facebook/Twitter”

The funny thing is mostly the people who do complain about this rant are usually users who have not found a benefit in using Facebook or Twitter and merely have an account just to have one.  They maybe update their account once every 2 weeks and has less than 50 friends.  However there are your emos and haters who just like to bicker and rant on things.

Honestly these people just seem to be bitter in life generally and are grumpy grandpas, if you ask me.

Then there are a few who doesn’t seem to grasp the benefit in status updates.

Take a look at a few more examples below:

Heres a Facebook Group

Twitter Comments

The benefits of Status Updates – Enough with the pointless bashing

Ok so whats the real benefit of an update of:

“I am getting ready for my trip to NYC”

“I just bought a new puppy”

“Just saw the movie G.I Joe”

Close minded people may view these updates..just babble….pointless.  I beg to differ.  Matter of fact, the millions of other users who effectively use Facebook & Twitter as an excellent medium for communication and engagement beg to differ as well, here’s why.

The main point in displaying these updates are to open up conversations and provide the lead for engagement

Its that simple folks.  Most people don’t realize that this is an excellent way to strike up a conversation and a perfect time to engage so that you are effectively using your Social Network to its full potential.  Why let anything go to waste when your not using it at full potential?  That’s like buying a Fast Expensive Car that just sits in your garage.

Now some people may say that some updates are too excessive?

Yes I do agree, some people need to learn The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook by Tamar Weinberg, however it goes back to the old saying “Something is better than nothing”

Its just like in jr.high when the boys would be afraid to dance with the girls but one boy who may not be the best dancer, dances himself silly in the middle of the gym and magically girls start to dance with him.  While the cool guys were laughing at the silly boy, the silly boy got to dance with the girls.

So stop the bickering, its only making yourself look bitter.  Go out there and Engage!  Communicate!  Do what the Social Networks were created for you to do and that’s Socialize, no matter how pointless the updates maybe, its just another way to provide communication.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Why Facebook and Twitter status updates are not useless

Twitter Clean Up

I wrote a post before on how to do a Twitter cleanup by using FriendorFollow.com to remove all non-followers on Twitter and using Twitter directories like Twellow.com or Wefollow.com to find and increase your niche follower count. The reason for a Twitter clean up is to remove all the non-engaged followers in your Twitter stream (besides celebs and news profiles).

Why follow these users if they don’t follow you back and provide relevant and engaging conversations? The 2nd step of a Twitter clean up is to increase your niche and social network of Followers that’s relevant to you.   The Twitter directories was a way to focus on finding new friends who you can target more effectively than friend  search.

New Twitter Account Management Tool for Maintenance

Well I have found a new website tool called InRev TwitIn at http://www.buzzom.com/ In their words

Welcome!!! Experience the new Social Media Tool. To follow and unfollow people in Twitter is just a click away. Just type in your Twitter Id and get on. Have Fun!! Manage your Twitter Account with faster operation and methods found nowhere else, secured by OAuth.

I recently came across this site and have found this tool to be the All-in-One ultimate resource for account management.  I also found this to more effective and faster than using friendorfollow in which I will explain why here shortly. To use the site, you must first log in using OAuth (an open protocol to secure access to a website with protected data)

Once in you will notice 3 major features for this website

1. Flush – Unfollow who are not following you

2.  Grow - Grow network, follow new people

3.  Reciprocate – Follow your followers back

The Flush Button

The Flush button is used to bring up 50 users (hit “refresh list” to bring up more) you are following but are not following you back.  Take advantage of this method by removing all the users in your Twitter stream who provide no engagement or value.

There is however the exception with Celebrities, News and other High Profile accounts that you may follow but don’t expect them to engage or follow back. Buzzom does have a great feature for filtering out these users and still pursue the rest.  These features are considering “locking”.  You have the “Follow Lock” and the “Unfollow Lock”.

• Locking – Locking users will place all the users you checkmark in an area where it won’t be in your future results anymore.
• The Follow Lock – All locked users you checkmark while searching for new users to Follow will be placed in the tab.  This is great when searching for new people to Follow on Buzzom, you can filter out all the Spammers, Bots and non-relevant people you don’t want to follow.  This is not a block feature but simply a filter to not show these users in Buzzom.
• The UnFollow Lock – Every user you Checkmark to Lock while “Flushing” away or finding users who you follow but they don’t follow back will be placed in the Unfollow Lock tab.  People place here are your typical Celebrities, News Feeders or High profile users who don’t typically follow people back.  Don’t worry if your afraid of removing a Twitter user who you like to follow but don’t mind they follow back, you can “SAVE” them or “LOCK” them so that way you won’t remove them from your Follow list.

Everything you Lock will be saved for all future uses due to OAuth.  Once you login Buzzom it will save your information for future use.  So Flush away and be sure to “SAVE” the users who you want to keep following while “FLUSHING” the rest of the users who don’t follow you back.

The Grow Button

This action provides you the list of people who are likely to follow you back. You can select the people from the list and follow them all at once.  You can also “LOCK” users who you do not want to follow and have Buzzom show them in the future searches.

The list is actually relevant to your profile and the users do have a high follow-back ratio.  Just because Buzzom automates the list you can still manually scroll down and un-check mark users you may feel not be worthy in following and adding to your network.

One of the fastest methods I seen to accurately grow your Twitter Network effectively and efficiently.  Other great methods Buzzom provides are:

• People Search - This search you can target new people to Follow by using keywords to locate in the Bio’s or Tweets.  This is a great search that I have found to replace the Twitter Directories like Twellow.  For instance I would use Twellow to locate “Real Estate Agents” or “Virginia” in the categories or search.  Buzzom now takes the search 1 step further by also allowing to switch to keywords in Tweets too.  So in essence this is an all-in-one search in this one stop shop site.
• Cross Follow - This cool feature will allow you to choose which Twitter user you want to show data for either all of his/her Followers or all of his/her users she is following.  In essence you will be comparing your data with thiers and will only show the people not in your network to allow to add to yours.  You can start selecting all the Top profiles in your niche to Cross Follow, it’s all about surrounding your self with like minded success individuals right?

The Reciprocate Button This action will bring up all the users who are following you that you haven’t followed back yet.  Now mostly the users you have skipped may be due to spammers or bots but you may occasionally skip a few on accident and this feature is great for finding lost stragglers.  These users who are following you should deserve a follow back if they are not spammers.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Ultimate Twitter Account Management Tool & Clean Up Maintenance

Support For Iran Election Crisis

These past 2 weeks have been crazy with the crisis over in Iran regarding a revolting Election.  Mashable has written a great timeline of events if you need to get caught up with all the Social Media hoopla regarding the Iran Crisis here.

A movement has been recently made to show support for the protesters in regards to the Iran Crisis, the movement is wearing or showing the color green for the democracy of Iran.  Many Athletes, Celebs and Social Media sites are incorporating this movement and is rapidly growing.

Below are 2 simple ways to make your Social Media icon turn green or showcase a green ribbon.

1.)  Go to http://helpiranelection.com/ this site will overlay your Twitter picture with a green overlay or a green ribbon.  You have to supply your username and password to do so but its real simple to get it done.  However if you are uneasy in giving out your password and username on this site you may want to try the other option (The site uses OAuth like many other sites that require login information)

or..

1. Go to http://www.picnik.com

2. Upload a picture to use

3. Click ‘create’ tab

4. Click ‘effects’

5. Select ‘Night Vision’

6. Or Click “Stickers”

7. Select “Awareness Ribbons”

6. Save

I like doing the picnik option because mainly I have always been a fan of the create on the fly site and because I like the flexibility of creating the avatar effects so you can use your avatar not only on Twitter but show support in all your Social Media Exposure like Facebook or AIM.

Whichever you decide to do, please let’s show our support in this crisis and hope it all ends with a solution.

Post from: Social Media Vision

How to turn your Social Media Avatar Green in Support for #Iran

Trending Topics

In the Twitter world there is a recently new feature on the side of the Twitter interface which shows what are the Top Trending topics currently on Twitter.

The trending topics can range from current T.V shows on right now, breaking news stories, viral posts and #Hashtags.

When you click on the Trend on the right hand side of your screen.  Twitter Search will bring up all the live results for that Keyword or #Hashtag.  Many people do click on the Trending Topics often just to eavesdrop on whats going on with the latest gossip and events.

Exposure

Having a Trending Topic for your blog or brand is very lucrative to your business.  It provides high exposure and viral content.

With this exposure can also come with the exploiters and spammers.  If you think about it, many people are tracking and listening to the Trending Topics and clicking on the links.

A spammer or exploiter will “Mask” a Trending Topic Tweet and insert a non-relevant url that will either go to the spammer’s website or some other website that is deceiving.  Thus Hijacking the Trending Topic.

Below is an example of the “Twitter Hijacker” are you one?

#Fullservice Hashtag Hijack

One of the Trending Topics of the day is #Fullservice which represents the New Kids On The Block music tour called Fullservice.

Now clicking ont he Trending Topic will show some of the exploiters taking advantage of the exposure

Promoting your website that has nothing to do with the trending topic

Promoting a personal youtube video that has nothing to do with the trending topic

The infamous porno spammers

The same spammer is back with her old tricks

Another Spammer using the trending topic to promote a non-relevant website

Another porn spammer

As you can see people will take advantage of the Trending Topics to hijack to their own website promotion.

Just like in my last post I wrote about being a Twitter Re-Tweet Thief……. Don’t be a Twitter Hijacker

Post from: Social Media Vision

The Twitter #Hashtag Hijacker

Chat Catcher by Shannon Whitley was one of my favorite Wordpress plugins in capturing Twitter messages and beautifully displaying them as blog comments.  There was also a great support module on Drupal.

I had announced earlier this month that Chat Catcher was shutting down due to high upkeep costs and lack of funding.

May 15th 2009, I received a teaser e-mail from Shannon explaining that Chat Catcher is not shutting down and there was more exciting announcements to come soon.

This was great news indeed and I was very curious to see what else was in store. 

Earlier today I recieved a message on Twitter from Shannon.

Ocasta Labs have injected both funds and resources to extend the Chat Catcher team and to accelerate development of the service thus keeping Chat Catcher alive!!  Hooray!

I have been using BackType Connect plugin to replace Chat Catcher but for some reason due to my blog theme, I was not able to make the plugin show the beautiful avatars on Twitter but the replacement plugin still worked nonetheless which doubled my comment count because I still had Chat Catcher on while waiting for the service to shut down.

Now that Chat Catcher is up and running I am going to keep Chat Catcher and also still use BackType connect because its customizable where I can filter out the Twitter messages and keep the other messages like “Blog comments” and “Digg” scans which Chat Catcher doesn’t support.

So in essence both plugins will compliment each other for my blog and I love it!

Thank you Shannon and Good luck with the funding!

P.S – The founder of Backtype Connect - Christopher Golda, was very helpful in reaching out in providing support to me about trying to fix my avatar problem, I was impressed and greatly appreciated his help.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Chat Catcher Plugin Revives With Funding

TweepME Still Alive? https://www.tweepme.com/

The run down on TweepME is that its a Web service that Auto-Follow Application on Twitter promoting to gain Followers based on Self Replicating Followers who use TweepMe service.  Bottom line is sheep of followers who mindlessly auto-follow who ever is in the scam network.

TweepMe has been Suspended many times on Twitter and recieved much criticism over the past months on how this service is a joke and is missing the whole point of Social Networking.

TweepMe started out if you ReTweeted the Web Site link you get added to the network for free as long as you login your Username and Password which is stored from the Twitter API.  This is why it was called a Virus or Trojan because it would manually follow and followback all people associated in this shady network.

Now TweepMe is charging members to join?  The latest ad as seen in the picture above on my blog is asking for$12.95, the sad thing is people are still gullible in doing this service.

TweepMe is pointless because……

• It’s a scam and a waste of money
• It has a bad reputation already and you don’t want to associate with them
• Most accounts who follow you are FAKES with no AVATARS
• You lose your connection and personal side with your followers

If you want more followers, use the simple approach………

• Use Services like www.twellow.com to find followers in your niche like Location, Business, and Interests.
• Connect with your followers more and then in turn you will get noticed
• Join twitter directories like Wefollow.com
• Use Followfriday #Hashtags in hopes to get some follow love back
• Have a complete written profile with strong keywords to be searchable
• Provide Quality Tweets and you will get noticed

Post from: Social Media Vision

TweepME Will Not Go Away, Don’t Waste Your Money On This Site

What is Chat Catcher? (http://www.chatcatcher.com) (creator Shannon Whitley)

Chat Catcher is a simple Blog Plug-in Application that scans Twitter and FriendFeed for references to your blog posts. When someone links to your blog, their post will be published to your blog’s comments.

What stood out Chat Catcher the most in my eyes is the sheer ability to scan all URL Shortners instead of just one URL Shortner like Dan Zarrella’s Tweetsuite which only scans Tinyurl.  Another great feature was the amazing filter option where others lacked in only filtering one username.

Also Chat Catcher was more efficient and faster than the other competition because Chat Catcher posted the Twitter comments directly to your Blog comments section.  Feedback from the Tweetsuite was that it sometimes was a bit laggy.

• TweetBacks – Yoast’s Plugin

• Tweetsuite – Dan Zarella’s Plugin

I actually have used Chat Catcher just for a short while but as you can see in my previous posts it works amazingly and increases post comment count

The Bad News…

Just as quickly as Chat Catcher was released and became increasingly popular, Shannon Whitley the creator has announced the shut down of Chat Catcher.

Via Twitter – Shannon has admitted that the cost of running Chat Catcher was a burden.

Having only 3 donations…..

Expensive costs of $10 dollars a day

This is indeed sad news especially with the release of a Drupal plugin.  It has however sparked some interest if the funding was there the plugin might stay.  Fellow competitor Dan Zarella seems to be engaging in conversation with the idea and who knows maybe Chat Catcher will be revived down the road…

Below is the actual E-mail sent out

“As Twitter has grown, so has the volume of data that needs to be processed by Chat Catcher.  I don’t have the resources to keep up with it any longer.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Chat Catcher Twitter Plugin Shuts Down