I have been using Google Realtime to figure out stats about my tweeting lately and surprisingly it also catches some tweets about me that I didn't know about. Some of these are from spam twitter bots who, in a new strategy, removes the "@" from your nick so you are not notified. One should note that Google Realtime does a good job graphing your Twitter usage.
No, I don't usually google myself but occasionally I would like to find out what google knows about me. This is especially important if you are going for an interview or getting into a consulting engagement. People WILL google you. Sometimes the results can be surprising and there might even be cases of mistaken identity. Notably, I share the same name with a director/partner/associate of a company and a Digital Animator. There are ways to help mitigate the risk of mistaken identity and one of them is ClaimID but I digress and it will probably be another post.So what did I find out about myself on Google RealTime?Sites are profiling you, even if you have not given them permission to do so. This is partly because of twitter.Like TwitHelp. I remember asking for help on twitter but TwiThelp actually saved the questions I asked. I know I haven't used this site before and they even gave me a bronze medal.
The internet knows what show/films/movies I watch just by profiling my tweets. This not unimaginable but it is interesting that they capture very specific information about. This actually gets better. fflick captures tweets and tracks what movies you are interested in, is watching or has watched.
Tweetboard is web front end for twitter. A re-skinning of twitter if you must. Their tag line is WYSINWGY - What you see is not what you get. They do a good job making the twitter web more useful and because they are re-skinning Twitter, my profile can be seen in public. The one thing i notice very quickly is that creates conversation threads
Other Real Time Search Engine. I discovered that there are definitely a lot of other real time search engines and Google is not the first one. The interesting about Topsy is that it's not only a Twitter powered search engine but it profiles you and in their own way determine if you are influential or not. Now I have not heard about topsy until i googled myself and found that I have a profile in Topsy. The question is has someone used topsy to search me or topsy has been looking into my twitter account.
Then there is this whole bunch of Favorite Tweet Trackers which i discovered. FavStar, TwiStar and Favotter. FavStar has my profile, it was because I tried out the feature when Twitter for iPhone was launched. The other 2 i have got no idea how they have got my profile. I am sure I didn't sign up. A quick check on twitter shows that I can view my own favorite tweets even if you have not logged in. It is all interesting in the beginning but how useful can it be? Can you can define a measure influence based on how many people favorite your tweets?
I came across impluCorporation. I have no idea what they do and I am very suspicious of them. They profile you and then display a whole slew of advertising. Looks like something a link baiter or spammer. Don't say I didn't warn you. But interestingly it also measures how much you have been tweeting.
Twicsy is a web app that pulls all your photos that you have tweeted into a single page. This is one of apps that in the future can be used to see which of your photos is interesting and how they can use that to generate more advertising revenue. It also can see how interesting your photos are and what are the patterns of viewership.
If you want to find out who are the top 100 twitter followers you interact most with,
Twitter100 is able to check who are the ones you have been interacting the most with and pull them all in one page. This also means that they are able to profile who you influence and who influences you. In the future, it will even know who your great great grandfather would be.
The Internet can, by using your tweet, to figure out what you have bought or what you are in the market to buy. The possibilities are endless. If someone knows what you want to buy and what you have bought. This is like free flow of information and they didn't even have to ask. You can imagine what this would do for future advertisers/marketers right? Scary. Check out
shopalizeThere are many ways to measure influence and the popular Twitter Meme #followfriday is not off the hook for this one.
FollowFriday is a site that ranks you based on how many times people have recommended you as people to follow on fridays (I am still not sure why do people only get followed on fridays) It's an interesting way to measure popularity on twitter but don't twitter has that incorporated into twitter already? It's interesting to know that I am ranked 33 in Singapore and less than 1000 globally but is it important?
The best one i have found and the funniest is
CurseBird. Now I am not sure how they got my profile but I am guessing someone use my name on CurseBird to see how well i curse. Apparently I curse likea Bad Mario Cart Racer. I actually remember that game well. Now, this probably has nothing to do with anything but it probably shows how foul mouth I am. It even has statistics for how much I say Fuck, Shit, Bitch, Cock, Dick, etc on a average given a 7 day period and how I compared with the rest of the world. Yes they can even profile how much you swear. As you can see I don't swear at all. I got penalized for retweeting or mirroring.
Before you think this is a post on Twitter tools, remember I have not signed up for 99% of these sites i found with my profile. This little exercise actually helped me understand a whole lot more about what Twitter is. The possibilities are endless but it is real scary. There is a whole lot more I have not posted but it shows how vulnerable we are to privacy. Based on what we say/tweet we can be profiled or targeted. Something marketers and advertisers would love but is it something we should be afraid.
I am however, is comforted by the fact that Twitter is open and being more open it is more transparent. You can know what you can know. With the help of google I could actually discover how my life is mapped on the internet. It would be much better than a close system with a wall garden implementation. You don't know what you don't know. You got no idea what these closed wall gardens are doing behind your back.
In this sense, twitter is a dangerous tool. Know what you are tweeting and understand that every word, link and photo can be profiled and you life can be revealed in more than a million ways. So choose wisely what to tweet. Can you imagine that, one of these days, people are able to connect the dots semantically through interactions with these sites? It could print out a manual to our lives and people can use these information to take advantage of us.
Let's just say this is a point in the proverbial Nail in the Privacy is Dead coffin. Mind the pun. I tell people use twitter however you like, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. There is no right way. Now I want to add "but what you tweet can be used against you". In the right hands, Twitter is a great communication tool. I still believe in this open communication concept. We just have to be aware of what are the possibilities. I am however digitally rediscovered.
Love to hear your thoughts on this matter. What would you do?
