I am sometimes asked by clients to do online researchof people and organizations.  Usually this is for reputation management purposes, but sometimes it is to scope out the competition. I have a number of tools I use for this and recently I’ve added Twitter to the toolbox. I am finding that some of the most valuable information isn’t in what people post.

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The Wooden Shoe is a tulip farm in Oregon between Portland and Salem and every spring they hold a tulip festival.  A friend of mine, whose mother is in town from Alaska, had planned to take a day trip there and I was invited along, but then she sent me an email. Read the rest of this entry »

To hear the media tell it Twitter is the hottest thing to hit the Internet in the last 5 years.  Of course the media has always suffered from short-term memory problems.  To hear social media evangelists tell it, your biggest earning potential this year lies with Twitter but social media evangelists frequently suffer from illusions of grandeur.  Now here’s the truth. Read the rest of this entry »

This past Tuesday the granddaddy of social media, MySpace, announced the launch of MySpace Local.   The fact that they would want in on local action is really no surprise the Wall Street Journal in it’s coverage of the Myspace Local launch points out “The local Internet-advertising market has accounted for some of the fastest growth in Internet advertising in recent years, as small businesses take their marketing online.”  But what does it mean for the small business and how can small businesses leverage MySpace Local. Read the rest of this entry »

Something is cooking at Twitter but is that smell Korean tacos or spam accounts? NPR reported the other week that the “hottest place to eat in Los Angeles right now serves food out of a truck and owes a large part of its success to Twitter” and that Kogi had over 8,000 followers on Twitter” but NPR may have been duped on that number? Read the rest of this entry »

Starting last August Google began showing suggestions as you type letters into the search box on their home page.  Starting yesterday they took on a local flavor and the results Google suggests are now determined by where in the world you are.  For example Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t until the week of January 18th this year that Facebook over MySpace in terms of search volume in Google.  Now it looks like they may both be loosing their audiences to Twitter. Read the rest of this entry »