Twitter Tips: Performing an advanced word search


A simple word search is to look for tweets that match a single word. Advanced word searches include matching a phrase, matching multiple words in any order, matching one word or another, and matching tweets that exclude a word.Searching for tweets that include a phrase If you want to search for a particular phrase, follow these steps to run the search using the Advanced Search form:

 1.  In any search page, click the Advanced Search link.  The Advanced Search form appears.

2.  In the This Exact Phrase text box, type the phrase you want to match.

 3.  Click Search.  Twitter displays a list of tweets that contain the phrase.

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However, this is one of those cases where no matter whether you’re using the new interface or the old, it’s easier and faster to not use the Advanced Search page. To search for tweets that match a phrase using the Search text box, enclose that phrase in quotation marks, as shown in figure 6.11.

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Twitter Tips: Searching for tweets that include multiple words


If you want to look for tweets (or users) that contain multiple words in any order using the Advanced Search form follow these steps:

 1.  Click the Advanced Search link in any search page. You see the Advanced Search page.

 2.  In the All of These Words text box, type each word you want to match.

 3.  Click Search.  Twitter displays a list of tweets that contain all of the words you typed.

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Once again, this is another case where it’s just easier to use the regular Search box, no matter whether you’re using the new interface or the old. Just type the words you want to match into the Search box in any order, as shown in figure 6.12.

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Twitter Tips: Searching for tweets that include one word or another


You can also search for those tweets that include one or more words from a list of words. Here’s how you do this using the Advanced Search form:

 1.  In any Twitter search page, click the Advanced Search link.  The Advanced Search page appears.

 2.  In the Any of These Words text box, type the list of words from which you want Twitter to find its matches.  Remember that Twitter matches a tweet if it contains at least one of the words you enter.

3.  Click Search.  Twitter displays a list of tweets that contain one or more of the words you typed.

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You can also perform the same search using the Search box directly. As a bonus, you also get to search for those tweets that include one or more phrases from a list of phrases. The operator to use is the word OR (which you must use with all uppercase letters), and you insert it between each word or phrase (with the latter enclosed in quotation marks). Figure 6.13 shows an example and the results it generated.

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Twitter Tips: Searching for tweets that exclude a word


It’s often useful to search for tweets that don’t include a particular word. For example, if you’re interested in Chardonnay wine but you dislike the ones that come from Chile, you can tell Twitter to skip tweets that include the word “Chile.” Here’s how it’s done using the Advanced Search page:

 1.  In a Twitter search page, click Advanced Search. The Advanced Search form loads.

 2.  In the None of These Words text box, type one or more words that you want to use to exclude tweets.

 3.  Click Search.  Twitter displays a list of tweets that don’t contain the words you typed.

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You can run the same type of search using the Search box directly, but you can also search for those tweets that exclude the phrases you specify. The operator you use is the minus sign (-), and you insert it immediately in front of the word or phrase you want excluded from the matching tweets. (For a phrase, note that you must put the minus sign inside the quotation marks.) Figure 6.14 shows an example and its results.

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Twitter tips:Realtime search results

Whatever type of search you perform, you see the matching tweets under the heading Realtime results for  term , where  term  is the search text you entered. The use of the word  realtime  (written,interestingly and a bit unusually, as a single word) means not only that you’re seeing the most recently posted tweets that match your search term, but that Twitter is tracking your search term in the background while your results are displayed.

If any new tweets are posted while you’re checking out the results,Twitter adds a banner above the results.
Here, x is the number of new results. You probably won’t see this banner for obscure search terms,but if your search is related to some topic that currently has lots of Twitter buzz, the banner mightappear surprisingly quickly. 

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For example, I ran a search on “ncaa” when the NCAA Basketball Tournament was playing, and within a few seconds Twitter displayed the banner shown in figure 6.8 to tell me that three new matching tweets had been posted.

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Twitter keeps updating the banner, too. In the few minutes it took me to write the last couple of paragraphs, the banner updated itself (see figure 6.9) to show me there were now 63 new tweets that matched my search.
Fortunately, Twitter is smart enough not to mess with your displayed search results, so you can continue to study them without interruption. However, if you’re curious to see the very latest results, click the Refresh link in the banner to rerun your search.

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Twitter tips:Searching with the old Twitter interface.

If your profile is still mired in the old Twitter interface, you can still search, of course, but getting things started takes a lot more work. Here are the steps to follow.

1.  In any Twitter page, scroll to the bottom of the page.

2.  Click the Search link. The Twitter Search page appears.

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3.  Type a search term in the text box.

4.  Click the Search button. You can also press Enter or Return. Twitter displays the tweets your search term  found either in the text or the tweeter’s username. Figure 6.7 shows an example results page.

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Twitter Tips---Protecting your updates with a PIN number


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Twitter Tips---Protecting your updates with a PIN number

The malicious hackers of the world are, to be charitable, a resourceful bunch, and it seems there’s no service in the world they haven’t cracked. That includes SMS, where there are now tools available online that enable evildoers to spoof SMS messages as long as they know the mobile number of the person being duped.

To guard against such attacks, Twitter offers a security feature called a PIN (personal identification number), which is a four-digit number that (ideally) only you know. When you add a PIN to your Twitter account, you can only post an update from your mobile phone if that text message begins with your four-digit PIN. No PIN, no post.

If you’re concerned about SMS spoofing (and while it’s not a huge deal right now, it could easily become a problem one of these days), follow these steps to protect your mobile updates:

1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

 2.  Click Settings. Your account settings appear.

 3.  Click the Devices tab.

 4.  Type a four-digit number in the PIN text box.  On most systems this text box is 

       indistinguishable from        the page background. 

 5.  Click Save.  Twitter saves the new setting, and you must now precede all mobile 

      phone messages with your PIN.

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Twitter Tips---Sending a direct message from your mobile phone


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Twitter Tips---Sending a direct message from your mobile phone

If you’re in a mutual-follow Twitter connection with someone, you can drop that person a direct message. If you happen to be running around town or stuck in a meeting and you think of something you want to tell your friend directly.

you can post the direct message right from your mobile phone. Here are the steps to follow:

 1.  On your mobile phone, access the SMS feature, and then start a new message.

2.  Type the Twitter phone number for your locale.

 3.  Type d followed by the Twitter username of the person you want to direct message.    

    Be sure to add at least one space after the username.

 4.  Type the rest of your message. 

5.  Send the message. Your phone sends the message, and before too long it appears in 
     that person’s Direct Messages timeline.

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Twitter Tips---Sending an update using Twitter’s mobile Web site


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Sending an update using Twitter’s mobile Web site

There are lots of third-party tools you can use to manage your Twitter account using your mobile phone, 
and you learn about many of them later in this chapter. And you’ve seen that you can also use your 
phone’s SMS feature to send tweets. However, what if you don’t want to install a Twitter application on 
your phone, or if your phone doesn’t support third-party programs? Or what if your mobile phone plan 
doesn’t include text messaging, or it charges big-time fees for each message.

If your phone includes a mobile Web browser and you’ve got a data plan, then you can work around each 
of these problems by using Twitter’s mobile Web site to send your tweets. This site is optimized for the 
small screens that are typical of mobile phones, so you can tweet to your heart’s content while you’re on 
the go.

Here are the steps to follow:

 1.  Point your mobile Web browser to http://m.twitter.com/.  Twitter redirects the browser to the mobile login page.

2.  Use the Username text box to enter your Twitter username.

3.  Use the Password text box to enter your Twitter password.

4.  Select Sign In. Twitter takes you to your home page.

5.  Type your update text in the What are you doing? box.

6.  Choose Update. Twitter sends your update.

7.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Sign Out. Twitter logs you out of your account.

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Twitter Tips---Sending an update from your mobile phone as e-mail


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Sending an update from your mobile phone as e-mail

If you don’t want to tweet via SMS (because you don’t have a text messaging plan or the plan you’ve got 
is not Twitter-friendly) and you can’t use the Twitter mobile site (say, because you don’t have a data plan), it’s still possible to post updates by phone (although not to receive updates). 

The trick here is a bit convoluted, but it works. What you’re going to do is take advantage of two different 
features that are available from various services on the Web:
  
1--E-mail-to-blog.  This is a feature that provides you with a special e-mail address, and any messages you send to that address are automatically posted to your blog. Blog hosts such as Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress support this feature.

2--Blog feed-to-Twitter. This is a feature that monitors your blog’s RSS feed and automatically sends new posts to your Twitter account. Services such as Twitterfeed and Tweet Later offer this feature.In other words, your tweet by e-mail process works like this:

 1.  Use your mobile phone to send an e-mail message to your blog’s e-mail address.

 2.  Your blog host posts that message to your blog.

 3.  Your Twitter application detects the new post via your blog’s RSS feed.

 4.  Your Twitter application sends the post text as an update to your Twitter account.

Like I said, it’s a bit of a circuitous route, but it doesn’t take all that long to set up, and once it’s running 
you never have to give it a second thought.So your first chore is to set up and configure a blog on a host 
that offers the e-mail-to-blog feature. 

Here are some options:

1-Blogger.  Go to www.blogger.com and create a new blog (it’s free). Click the Settings tab, click Email, 
add text to the Email Posting Address text box to complete your posting address, and then click Save Settings.

  2-TypePad. Go to www.typepad.com and create a new blog (plans start at $4.95 a month). Click your 
blog, click the Configure tab, click Mobile, and then make a note of the Secret Address.

  3-WordPress. You need to be using the full version of WordPress available from http://wordpress.org (the free version at http://wordpress.com doesn’t offer the Post via E-mail feature) or sign up for a WordPress blog host. See the instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Blog_by_Email.

  4-LiveJournal. Go to www.livejournal.com and create a free blog. Click the Account link, and then click the Mobile tab. In the Email Posting section, fill in an address and a PIN number, and then click Save.

  5-Windows Live Spaces. Create a free blog at http://spaces.live.com. In your space, choose Options More options, click Spaces, and then click E-mail publishing. Select the Turn on e-mail publishing check box, fill in the fields, and then click Save.

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Twitter Tips---Configuring Twitter to nudge you for updates


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Configuring Twitter to nudge you for updates

If you get busy with a project or some other time-draining commitment, you might forget to keep up your end of the Twitter conversation. Hey, it happens. If you don’t want your account to get stale and you want to avoid your mutual followers nudging you (as described in Chapter 4), then you can get Twitter to do the nudging by sending you a reminder to post.

 This reminder gets sent to your mobile phone, so you’ll get it no matter where you are (assuming your 
phone is on, of  course).This feature is called Auto Nudge, and Twitter fires off the reminder message any time you haven’t posted for 24 hours. Follow these steps to configure Auto Nudge on your account:

 1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

 2.  Click Settings. Your account settings appear.

 3.  Click the Notices tab.

 4.  Select the Auto Nudge check box.

 5.  Click Save.  Twitter saves the new setting and will nudge you the moment you start to slack off.

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Twitter Tips---Sending a reply from your mobile phone

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Sending a reply from your mobile phone

Replies are open to anyone whose account isn’t protected, so you can reply to any Twitter user from your phone. This is great if you want to send a witty retort while you’re out and about.

Here’s how it’s done:

1. On your mobile phone, access the SMS feature and start a new message.

2. Enter the Twitter phone number for your locale.

3. Type @ followed by the Twitter username of the person you want to reply to. Be sure to add at least

one space after the username.

4. Type the rest of your message.

5. Send the message. Your phone hands the message off to Twitter, and it then appears on your timeline, usually within a few seconds.

Reference : wiley.com

Twitter Tips--Searching for tweets by location


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Searching for tweets by location
If you use a Twitter client on a mobile device that includes a global positioning system (GPS) sensor, chances are that the client can use that information to update your Twitter location information. For example, the iPhone clients Twittelator Pro, Tweetie, and Twitterific can all take advantage of the GPS sensor in the iPhone 3G.

 Tweets you send are tagged with your current position, so many Twitter updates have an associated location. (For tweets from people who haven’t specified their location or who’ve used some vague or jokey location, this information isn’t so useful.)If you’re interested in locating people who are tweeting near a particular location, you can use Twitter Search to specify that location as well as a distance. For example, you could search for tweets that were sent within 10 miles of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Here are the steps to follow to search for tweets by location using the Advanced Search form:

 1.  Click the Advanced Search link in a Twitter search page.  The Advanced Search page 
appears.

 2.  In the Near this Place text box, type the location.

 3.  Use the Within this Distance list to select a value.  The choices are 1, 5, 10, 15, 25, 50, 
100, 500, or 1000.

 4.  Select either Miles or Kilometers.

 5.  Click Search.  Twitter displays a list of tweets that were sent within the specified distance 
of the location.

To perform location-based searches from the Search box, you use two operators:near: Use this operator followed by a place name to search for tweets sent from that location.within: Use this operator followed by a number followed by either mi (for miles) or km (for kilometers) to search for tweets within that distance of the location.

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One advantage you get with using these operators is that you can use them on their own. For example, using near: on its own returns all the posts sent from just that location. Similarly, using within: on its own returns all the posts sent within the specified distance of your current location.Figure 6.19 shows a search query that looks for posts sent within 10 miles of Indianapolis, and I’ve also added the search term restaurant.

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Twitter Tips--Filtering tweets by hashtag


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Filtering tweets by hashtag
You can tag a post with a particular topic by including in the tweet the topic word preceded by the hash symbol (#). For example, if you post a tweet related to Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system, you could include the hashtag #windows7 somewhere in the tweet. However, the real purpose behind hashtagging tweets is that they give you and other tweeters an easy way to search for a particular topic because the hashtag acts as a kind of natural filter.

Here’s how to perform a hashtag search using the Advanced Search page:

 1.  Click Advanced Search in any search page.  The Advanced Search form appears.

 2.  In the This Hashtag text box, type the hashtag topic you want to find.  Don’t add the 
hash (#) in front of the topic word; Twitter adds it for you automatically.

 3.  Click Search.  You see a list of tweets that include the hashtag.

Hashtag searching is probably easiest from the Search box because all you have to do is place the hashtag operator (#) in front of the topic. For example, figure 6.18 shows a search for the hashtag #windows7 where the tweet also includes the sad emoticon.


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Twitter Tips--Searching for tweets that mention a person


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Searching for tweets that mention a person

Reply tweets always begin with @username ,but plenty of tweets mention users by including @
username  somewhere within the tweet text. It could be a retweet, a shout out to someone, an 
acknowledgment of an original post, a FollowFriday recommendation, or whatever. For these 
types of tweets, you can search for updates that include a reference to a user, possibly also filtered 
with other search criteria.



To search for tweets that mention a user with the Advanced Search page, follow these steps:

 1.  Click the Advanced Search link in a Twitter search page.  The Advanced Search page 
appears.

 2.  In the Referencing this Person text box, type the Twitter username of the person 
whose mentions you want to search.

 3.  Use one or more of the text boxes in the Words section to specify which tweets you 
want to match.

 4.  Click Search.  Twitter displays a list of tweets that mention the person and that match 
your other criteria.

To search for a user’s mentions from the Search box, use the @ operator, which you insert 
immediately in front of the username. In figure 6.17 I’ve put together a search query that looks for 
mentions of the user wordspy that contain the text RT (so they’re retweets)

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