Tracking what people say on Facebook

Here’s something on using Google to find Facebook conversations.

 

As things stand, I haven’t yet found a way within Facebook to keyword search discussions. But try the following advanced search string for an insight into what people are saying about the BBC:

 

site:facebook.com/topic bbc

 

If you search Facebook for BBC you can filter your results according to People, Pages, Groups, Events, Applications.  However, this is a very clunky way of finding out what people are saying – and moreover, groups which don’t feature the word BBC, but where the BBC is nonetheless being discussed, will not be included in the results.

Tomorrow’s news is already out there

Last week I was asked about tracking the use of keywords used in web search.

This is an area of most concern to web developers, but can serve several journalistic purposes too.

From an archival point of view, it can give you an insight into the terms being used by your audience, allowing you to optimise the metadata for your content to make it easier for them to find.

It can also provide you with a means of auditing how you are doing against your competitors in the field, in terms of your coverage (and your competitor’s coverage), compared with what subjects people are interested in (and hence searching for).

It’s the economy stupid

Apparently Facebook is facing a serious recession over the pond, while LinkedIn is going from strength to strength.

 

Could it be that people are less inclined to use their time online to skive, and more inclined to find new jobs, now the economic climate has cooled?

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! LinkedIn vs Facebook

On Read Write Web today there’s a stramash afoot: LinkedIn vs Facebook.

The focus of this article is on which is the better for keeping and establishing professional contacts. Taking this to its logical conclusion (for this blog, at any rate) I thought it might be useful to pit the two against each other for the purposes of finding journalistic contacts.

So... let’s say we are after an expert to pass comment on James Whale‘s attempts to influence the public during last week’s Mayoral Election, through comments made during his radio show on Talksport (for which he quite rightly got the tin-tac). We’re after an expert on media impartiality, or political influence on the media.

Busted: brave bobbies break blowhard berks…

Hard-pressed journalists on slow news days aren’t the only profession making the most of Facebook to keep them in work.  Scotland Yard are developing their very own User Generated Content hub. Though in their case, the ‘use’ in question pertains more to drugs, guns and violence.