CIL2009: Searching Conversations: Twitter, Facebook, & the Social Web

Greg Notess is the speaker. (Always forget that his last name is pronounced No-Tess.)

Public vs. Private Conversations:

• Lines are blurring
• Fully public: on open web sites
• Semi-public communities - members only
• Mostly private - If no one else shares
• What is archives? And where?

Old databases (old ways we had our conversations online) - Conversations occur on:

• Email and email lists
• Usenet (Google Groups)
• Web forums

Discussion forums are searched through:

• http://www.omgili.com
• http://www.boardtracker.com/
• http://boardreader.com/
• Google is highlighting forum postings in their search results
• Some forums you have to join in order to search

Email and email lists:

• People want to search their own email
• Web archives - may be only for subscribers
• Some lists are searchable, but it may feel archaic
  

The Summize Story:

• Searched reviews and options, but people didn't use it much
• Added a Twitter search option
• So good that Twitter bought them (http://search.twitter.com/)
  
• Should rise to prominence
• There are advance commands - can search for a user, hashtags. emoticons, questions, links and more
• Good for finding people's initial reactions to something (like presidential debates)
• Oh....Twitter advanced search!

Tweetzi: Another Twitter search engine

Facebook:

• Signup
• See in-network profiles
• See most participants' friends
• Community & group demographics
• Facebook's web search may be Live Search (live.com)
• Can limit who can see your profile (and important thing to consider and likely do)
• Few users actually change their default privacy settings, but it seems to be growing in popularity
  

People Searching in General:

• Pipl -- Surfaces information that you might not find otherwise
• Spokeo -- Find people's social networking activities. Must have an account. Can track all of your friends' social networking activities. Find more of the person's usernames. Fee-based.
  

In other news: I forget to mention that I purchases Ruth Kneale's book this morning, You Don't Look Like a Librarian: Shattering Stereotypes and Creating Positive New Images in the Internet Age. This is a topic that she has been passionate about for years. Ruth, congratulations!

Modified 4/6/2009

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