The Inner-workings of the Merc Mind

Twitter Saved Search techniques you MUST know

RickMacMerc — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 23:09:27 +0000

When Twitter first started, the Public Timeline flowed at a manageable pace. I never spent much time monitoring it, but if you were a reasonably quick reader, you could keep up with it. Now the flow of the Public Timeline is so fast, it would be unsafe to raft down. You’d disappear beyond the horizon in seconds and would never be seen again.

The big buzz, the sound of the greater Twitter conversation, is impossible to follow. There’s too much going on. Too much being said (in some cases way too much is being said).

This is why we follow specific people; it allows us to narrow the flow and filter the sources of the rushing torrent of tweets. “I’ll read what you have to say, and these other two hundred or so people—but that’s about all I can manage.”

But…what if there’s someone you don’t follow that you really should?

What if there is someone out there with the same interests as you, the same passions, the same sense of humor in a different timezone and, possibly a different country.

One of the great things about Twitter is that it allows you to discover these people.

An easy way to do this is through saved searches. Saved searches allow you to be alerted to people you don’t know and don’t follow when they tweet about something that is of interest to you.

The link in the previous paragraph takes you to Twitter’s own page on how to create a saved search¹ but I would like to spend some time explaining why you’d want to do such a thing and tricks for applying saved searches in special situations.

Search smart

Once you get a search that is returning great results, saving it (by clicking Save This Search) allows you to come back and check on it. Many Twitter clients² allow you to follow your saved searches like a Twitter stream unto themselves. But first you have to get the search to return those good results.

You have to be clever.

Do a search for “Star Trek” and you will find another flood of tweets too torrential to take in. But do a search for “Star Trek DS9” or ““Star Trek” Spock” and you’ll find just the tweets that talk about that specific show or that show and one specific character. A slightly more manageable stream.

Another example is a saved search I keep going; I dig Mac computers. The problem is, there are a lot of people who dig Mac Cosmetics, Mack Trucks, Mac & Cheese and various other Macs that aren’t made by Apple Inc. and interest me far less. For this reason, I have to tweak my search criteria with “-truck -cosmetics -cheese -Freddie” just to make it easier to find the tweets of people who dig what I dig.³

Search for people “in the mood”

You can also search by mood. And, no, Twitter doesn’t have some crazy biorhythmic technology that can read users’ emotions as they type.⁴ How do you tell your followers that your tweet is meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek? You add a “; )”—well, so does everyone else and that is searchable! Search for : ) , : ( , >:^O or any other emoticon you can think of.

Got answers? Search for questions.

Add a “?” to your search and you’ll get nothing but people asking questions… questions you can possibly save the day by answering. Social media gurus⁵ always talk about “adding value”, well answering someone’s question is the easiest way to do this.

Search for links… or don’t… totally your call

Quite often you want to search for tweets with or without links in them. Maybe you want to find the videos that are going viral right now. Or maybe you’d like to see if Guy Kawasaki ever tweets anything that doesn’t link somewhere else. ((I know this technique works, but the sheer volume of linked tweets from Guy causes this search to fail)) Easy to do. Add filter: “links” to see links and “-filter:links” to exclude them. There’s also a tab in #newtwitter to look at only link tweets more easily.

These tricks use what are called search operators and there are a few dozen handy ones right here.

MOST IMPORTANT: Search for your fans

If you’re in business and represent a brand (especially if that brand is you), this isn’t just helpful, it’s mandatory—start saved searches for your brand, your name, your company and your products and give attention to the people who are talking about your bread and butter. You can thank those that speak well of you and reward them for their positive testimonials and lend aid to those who speak badly of your product and win them back.

If your brand is you, you’re looking for your fans. How amazing do you think it would feel to be @ing with your friends on Twitter talking about your favorite musician…not using his @username (maybe you don’t even realize he’s on Twitter…and you call yourself a fan!) and then suddenly some stranger jumps in to the conversation—and it’s HIM!!

It’s nice enough getting an @reply from someone you admire when you @mention them directly, but it’s crazy exciting getting a reply when you didn’t know that person cares to listen in. It’s amazing. If your fan seems nice and doesn’t trip your stalker alarm and want to put the cherry on it—follow them.

You can do this without hardly any effort with a saved search.

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basically, you do a search on Twitter and then look for and click the Save This Search button
programs that run on your desktop computer or mobile devices
I still get people talking about Big Macs, but this does help filter a bit of the noise
not yet anyway
ì ɑʍ not ɑ ʂoϲìɑӀ ʍҽdìɑ guɾu… but I will help you with it, if you like

Making your blog findable: Do as I say, not as I do

RickMacMerc — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:08:40 +0000

There is one big problem with this blog beside the fact that I seldom update it: it’s hidden away in a subsection of a subdirectory—it’s not RickYaeger.com the way it should be.¹

In the beginning, the blogs.macmerc.com subdomain was followed by /rick, /brian and /james …me and the other guys who regularly submitted stories to MacMerc.com. It was a subdomain for all our blogs. It made sense at the time.

As time went on the guys decided they wanted blogs under their own brand² and I should have gotten a clue at that point and registered my name and put my blog under its header, but I didn’t.

Since then I have posted stories that have been linked by high profile sites and continue to bring in eyes to this little, far-off corner of MacMerc.com, so now it becomes important to make sure any changes to the URL of the site don’t disrupt the incoming links.

What I’m trying to say, people, is this: don’t wait until you get some attention to start doing things the way you will do them when you’re successful—do it right and do it right now.

If you haven’t registered yourname.com, do it now. Domains are crazy-cheap at GoDaddy.com

If you don’t have a blog and are intimidated by even starting one, I wrote an article on how to set up a Tumblr blog at your own custom domain. It will get you set up with a blog with very little technical effort. As for the actual blogging, a follow-up video is on the way.

Stake your claim on your name—if you don’t someone else will.

at least it hasn’t been for all these years it has been around
as well they should

Person-to-Person vs. Product-to-Consumer

RickMacMerc — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 01:33:35 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

A buddy of mine emailed me a link to an article. The piece detailed the hiring of Eric Kuhn by United Talent Agency as part of their digital media department.

The idea of a talent agency offering an agent focusing specifically on social media disappoints me a bit. Maybe I’m reading the move the wrong way,¹ but it seems UTA is looking at the interactions on Twitter, Facebook and the other social media platforms in the same way that they have viewed old media: social media has eyes on it, so lets force feed products to those eyes and make them buy stuff.

I like you. I consider you a friend, so I’ll tell you what I told my buddy who sent me the link to this article:

Social media works best when it’s about people connecting with people. I’m afraid this will change the ‘talent’ from being a person interacting with their fans into a product marketing itself to its consumer.

It’s old media marketing disguised as new.

There are some great and successful examples of celebrities who know how to work social media.² Their follower numbers are huge and they continue to build a following because they are focussed on being themselves: the digitally accessible human being who has a family, a few cool hobbies, interesting previously-unkown talents and maybe supports a great charity …and also happens to be on one of our favorite TV shows, or plays in our favorite band or on our favorite team.

They interact with their fans like friends and those fans then respond by feeling an emotional investment in that celeb’s professional efforts because “their buddy from Twitter” is on that show, at that concert or in that game.

In the end a product is still sold, but what got people on board to buy was the honest, transparent connection between two people.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what this guy at UTA actually does, but I think it’s much better when the actors, writers, directors, props people, makeup artists, musicians, and athletes do their own tweeting according to who they are and how they are wired.

and if I am, please feel free to discuss it in the comments
if it turns out that those celebs have had this success due to direct help from their talent agency I will be very surprised

Follow Friday… Now in Twitter List form

RickMacMerc — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 03:49:36 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

It’s tradition on Twitter for people to tweet a list every Friday of @usernames of people they recommend other people follow. This post is then tagged with #FF or #followfriday so that, presumably, people who don’t follow you can still search out all the users being recommended by searching for all the posts marked with the #FF hashtag.

It’s called Follow Friday.

In theory, I love the idea of Follow Friday. I love rewarding people who have made my Twitter experience better by sharing them with my followers. I love seeing my @username pop up in other peoples’ #FF tweets.

I must admit, though, that I rarely if ever actually follow anyone that has been recommended to me by my followers unless they are recommending that I follow someone I dig in real life who has finally made the leap to Twitter.

I also find that I have way too many people I really enjoy interacting with that, if I do commit to tweeting out a #FF list, I invariably have to tweet three or four of them to properly thank the people who have made that week in tweeting a fun one. I feel like I’m making an Academy Award acceptance speech and I have way to many people to thank.

My first idea was to create a post on my main blog every week, giving a link to a person’s Twitter page and to their webpage if they included a link on their profile page. The list was made up of people who had @mentioned me over the past week and ‘added value’ as the social media gurus¹ like to say.

That worked quite well, I thought. But again, week to week, I felt worthy people were left off because they just happened to have not interacted with me in the past seven days and yet enriched my Twitter life with their other tweets nonetheless.

My latest attempt at a solution² is to create a Twitter list for you to follow. I’ll add people to that list as they make themselves known to be a positive influence on my Twitter adventures.

I think this method might actually work because, unless somebody I add this week later proves to become a nuisance and gets themselves removed from the list, they will be there next week and the weeks to come. You follow the list once and you automatically start following more cool people as the days go on. You can also just scan the users on the list for cool people to follow any day of the week—not just Friday.

I’ll give it a go and report back my findings.

What is your #FF strategy? Do you participate in it at all?

ì ɑʍ not ɑ ʂoϲìɑӀ ʍҽdìɑ guɾu!
and don’t ask me why I’m so committed to making this work because I really don’t have an answer beyond ‘it vexes me’

Kevin Smith will not go gentle from that good flight. [NC-17]

RickMacMerc — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:34:51 +0000

The following is a series of tweets issued by writer/director Kevin Smith earlier today after being removed from a Southwest Airlines jet due to his weight shortly after having been seated. Keep in mind, these messages went out to Mr. Smith’s 1,637,505 Twitter followers as the events unfolded. Be warned, the language is strong¹ . Lesson to be learned: the age of treating customers (any customers) unfairly has come to an end—the injustices you have whispered to someone behind closed doors will be tweeted (and retweeted) from the rooftops—everybody has a platform.²

Dear @SouthwestAir – I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?

Dear @SouthwestAir, I flew out in one seat, but right after issuing me a standby ticket, Oakland Southwest attendant Suzanne (wouldn’t give

last name) told me Captain Leysath deemed me a “safety risk”. Again: I’m way fat… But I’m not THERE just yet. But if I am, why wait til my

bag is up, and I’m seated WITH ARM RESTS DOWN. In front of a packed plane with a bunch of folks who’d already I.d.ed me as “Silent Bob.”

So, @SouthwestAir, go fuck yourself. I broke no regulation, offered no “safety risk” (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?). I was

wrongly ejected from the flight (even Suzanne eventually agreed). And fuck your apologetic $100 voucher, @SouthwestAir. Thank God I don’t

embarrass easily (bless you, JERSEY GIRL training). But I don’t sulk off either: so everyday, some new fuck-you Tweets for @SouthwestAir.

Wanna tell me I’m too wide for the sky? Totally cool. But fair warning, folks: IF YOU LOOK LIKE ME, YOU MAY BE EJECTED FROM @SOUTHWESTAIR.

Via @byrneification “save the anger for SModcast” Believe it, Son. @SouthwestAir? You fucked with the wrong sedentary processed-foods eater!

(1/2) @pigz “I know several people bigger then u who have flown on other airlines” I saw someone bigger than me on THAT flight! But I wasn’t

(2/2) about to throw a fellow Fatty under the plane as I’m being profiled. But he & I made eye contact, & he was like “Please don’t tell…”

Dear @SouthwestAir, I’m on another one of your planes, safely seated & buckled-in again, waiting to be dragged off in front of the normies.

And, hey? @SouthwestAir? I didn’t even need a seat belt extender to buckle up. Somehow, that shit fit over my “safety concern”-creating gut.

Via @bogo_lode “Maybe you should organize a boycott” A boycott of one. This is my last Southwest flight. Hopefully by choice.

Hey @SouthwestAir! Look how fat I am on your plane! Quick! Throw me off! http://twitpic.com/1340gw

Hey @SouthwestAir! Sometimes, the arm rests are up because THE PEOPLE SITTING THERE ALREADY PUT THEM UP; NOT BECAUSE THEY “CAN’T GO DOWN.”

The @SouthwestAir Diet. How it works: you’re publicly shamed into a slimmer figure. Crying the weight right off has never been easier!

Via @mmm_cereal “my dad’s bigger than you & flies southwest all the time. some1 just wanted to say they were a dick to a celeb” Celeb? Me?!

Hey @SouthwestAir! I’ve landed in Burbank. Don’t worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised.

(1/2) Hey @SouthwestAir? Fuck making it right for me just ’cause I have a platform. I sat next to a big girl who was chastised for not buy-

(2/2) ing an extra ticket because “all passengers deserve their space.” Fucking flight wasn’t even full! Fuck your size-ist policy. Rude…

Southwest Airlines’ tweeter has kept up with Kevin, and here are a few of the posts found at @SouthwestAir:

@ThatKevinSmith hey Kevin! I’m so sorry for your experience tonight! Hopefully we can make things right, please follow so we may DM!

Hey folks – trust me, I saw the tweets from @ThatKevinSmith I’ll get all the details and handle accordingly! Thanks for your concerns!

@jdickey no, unfortunately…this is the real deal. Silent Bob is striking back.

I read every single tweet that comes into this account, and take every tweet seriously. We’ll handle @thatkevinsmith issue asap.

I’ve read the tweets all night from @thatkevinsmith – He’ll be getting a call at home from our Customer Relations VP tonight.

I have every confidence that this situation will work out amicably but it does go to show you how fast a bad customer service move can do serious damage with the connectivity of social networking…wildfire.

but tame by Kevin Smith standards
and if they don’t, they probably know somebody who does

Why I’m excited about the Apple iPad …and why I bought a Kindle DX

RickMacMerc — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:09:37 +0000

Lately, I have become a bit of a voracious reader; keeping a stack of almost thirty books on the go at a time. I’m not bragging. I actually think I may have a bit of a problem. But that’s fodder for another post.

Anyway.

I’ve been dying for a book reading device that would make my books easier to bring with me and access on the go. I love to read at my local Starbucks but don’t like to stick to just one book and bringing a stack around with me makes the baristas compelled to tell me that I’m not permitted to stay quite that long. “We do close, you know!”

So a book reader was in order, but with all the buzz about the upcoming Apple tablet announcement, I thought it prudent to wait until January 27th to make my decision. That evening, after reading the announcement coverage, I ordered an Amazon Kindle DX, it arrived less than 2 days later and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Unlike the Apple iPad, it is not backlit or glossy which is a huge plus for book reading in my opinion. I look at a backlit LCD all day at work and my eyes get strained. I need a light to read by, but I don’t need it to be emanating from the device. The Kindle also offers wireless access via Amazon’s global Whispernet as part of the purchase of the device—not something else I have to add to my already bloated cellular bill. That alone is magic. And the Kindle, being an Amazon product, has access to a wide selection of titles to read.¹

You might assume from this that I’m not a big fan of the Apple iPad. Well, you’re right. At the moment, I’m not.

But, in the case of the iPad, the “one more thing…” that was once a giddily anticipated staple of Steve Jobs’ keynote addresses is a powerful one. The one more thing here is the same thing that made the iPhone so compelling. It’s not the touch screen, the accelerometer, the wifi or 3G access…it’s all of those things plus one very powerful component whose impact cannot be underestimated…

…developers.

We have only seen the iPad with a handful of desktop-style apps…ones that we already have on our iPhones and iPod touches…expanded and made somewhat more glorious on the bigger screen. And, in spite of how Mr. Jobs said it as if we were about to have our eyes opened to a new world, we already know what it’s like to have the internet in our hands.² But what we haven’t seen is what the iPad can do in the hands of the enormous and shockingly talented community of developers Apple has attracted.

I saw the announcement on January 27th hoping to see something that would solve the logistical problems of my reading addiction and was disappointed. That is not to say that I won’t be getting an Apple iPad. I fear that may by unavoidable. I might be compelled to, not by Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field, but by the possibilities for this device as seen through the talented and innovative minds of what will no doubt be a formidable Apple iPad developer army.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

the only problem here is that 40% of my reading is rather obscure—the very “long tail” that has made Amazon so successful—and many of those titles are not yet available for the Kindle…still, there’s lots to choose from
Heck, with the iPhone, I know what it’s like to have the internet in my pants!

Starting out on Twitter

RickMacMerc — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:42:13 +0000

I hadn’t seen @loadedlola in about a month and, when I last saw her, I had persuaded her to look into Twitter. Obviously she did or I wouldn’t be able to link her page here, but she posted only 5 times and then drifted away. I think that’s probably pretty common. When I saw her today, I asked her about it.

She explained that no one she knows is on Twitter and she doesn’t really watch TV or follow celebrities, so she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. That got me to thinking. I see this as my fault; I pushed her to the gates of Twitter and expected that she’d be able to find its awesomeness on her own without a map or any guidance. How soon I forgot how I got started with Twitter.

So what should someone like @loadedlola do when no one (beside me) is following her and she really isn’t all that interested in what @TaylorSWift13 wore on her recent flight?

My first answer is,

“There are celebrities, and there are celebrities.”

There are people like @AlySSa_miLAno¹ who are famous from TV and movies—those are the people the paparazzi stalk around Hollywood. But every field of endeavor has its own celebrities who are well known and loved by the others in their category, but are not household names anywhere else. I follow bloggers, artists, scientists, magicians, fictional characters, cartoonists, software developers, journalists, and all kinds of other types of celebrities. Try to think of the heroes of your favorite subject. There’s a good chance many of these people are probably on Twitter too—search for their names—find them—follow them.

Once you find a few interesting people to follow, be patient, watch to see who they @mention and have a look at each of their follow lists. You’ll want to read these with a mind to follow more people. You’re following your heroes; now follow your hero’s heroes. Soon you’ll have quite an impressive collection of people whose tweets will enrich your Twitter experience by tailoring its content to your interests. You don’t have to read every post like an email in your inbox that requires a response before your life can be complete. Relax and enjoy what you do read and let the rest slide by. This a place where you may have that “a ha” moment and have an inkling of why Twitter is so meaningful to people.

But how do you get more people to follow you? It’s all fun reading about what other people are doing and thinking, but when do you get a chance to let your voice be heard? How do you get to the place where you can tweet out something profound and 5 people will retweet it and another 7 or so will @mention you in reply?

For this I have another truism:

“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”

In other words, spend some time retweeting and @mentioning the people you follow when they post something worthy of comment.

If you consider the word “remarkable,” it means exactly what it should mean; something or someone worthy of mention. When someone you follow says something remarkable, make a remark and make sure you format the tweet so that you include their @username or that you format your retweet properly. Also, if someone you follow is having a problem and needs an answer to a question they’ve tweeted out, try to answer it. @mentions and retweets are gold on Twitter and will mean a lot to the person you honor with them.

Once you’ve spend some time giving to your community in the form of conversational participation, @mentions and retweets, you will become well known within that circle and people will begin to follow you because you’ve proven to be remarkable yourself.

@AlySSa_miLAno is an awesome Twitter citizen by the way

Twitter Updates for 2009-12-10

RickMacMerc — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:00:00 +0000

struggling to stay positive today #
RT @donnagow: @NathanFillion do you have @yowza by @greggrunberg? #
just had a great call with @klowenberg …getting to know him has been one of the great benefits of moving into the Grunnyverse this year. #
HCIT!? RT @animatorx: Got my Droid on Friday, Yowza!! on Tuesday and used my first Yowza!! coupon on Thursday . Thanks. Great app. #
If I was taking meds, today I would have up'd the dose #

Twitter Updates for 2009-12-09

RickMacMerc — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Got a bit of reading to do. 'scuze me. http://yfrog.com/4f91ykoj #
Fill in the blanks: http://yfrog.com/1dca1mj #
If I find that my shirt has lost a button, that kind kinda suck. But if a gingerbread man is missing a button, that's a tragedy. #
The IMDb iPhone app is also unavailable in the Canadian iTunes Store. Been a great week for needlessly absent apps. #
I've been really enjoying Tweetie 2 on the iPhone, but a little owl just told me I might be switching to a new Twitter iPhone app tomorrow #

Twitter Updates for 2009-12-08

RickMacMerc — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:00:00 +0000

I may have to go to the mall to get some peace and quiet tonight. I have pandemonium in stereo. #
I understand why @yowza isn't available in Canada but no Canadian iTunes Store download for Dragon Dictation makes no sense to me—pls splain #
RT @davepeterson: GadgetyTech post: Nook vs. Kindle – Hands on and Side by Side – http://bit.ly/5PuD6o #
Great video. Interview with @dividepictures talking about his USO tour…looking forward to "Armored" as well. http://bit.ly/7QLvaj #
Starbucks run. http://yfrog.com/4gx2ltdj #