Tweetfeel let’s you put in a search term and through the magic of some "insanely complex sentiment analysis" identifies the emotions. Let’s give it a try.

I did a search on "poverty", thinking that would be a good term that people might be talking about these days and have a little bit of activity.

Here are the results:

Looking for the keyword "poverty" the Tweetfeel tool parses through the other words used in context with the search term and tracks them based on the general meanings behind the other words.

Searching for words like "like", "hate", "fun" and others you can get an idea of the general tone and feelings people have about a topic. Pretty interesting if you think about the potential. Get a general idea about topics and then do your part to support or change the topic the way you want.

Figure out sentiment on twitter with Tweetfeel.

Post from: EveryJoe

Use Tweet Feel to See What’s Happening

According to Paul Bernard, a veteran executive coach and career management adviser who runs his own firm, many job seekers make the mistake of relying too heavily on online job boards, particularly at the start of their search.

Bernard advises job seekers to begin to network immediately. Not only can networking expand your possibilities but it can also build and demonstrate skills, he said.

“Networking builds confidence and gets you into the hidden job market,” he explained, referring to unadvertised job openings.

You really need to have a network that you can rely on. Let people you know, from professional associates to relatives to high school buddies, understand that you are looking for a job. This way you will come to mind if someone you know hears anything. Additionally, you can attend networking events and get to know new people.

This even works online. You may scoff at social media’s usefulness, but the truth is that some social networking sites are great places to find jobs. LinkedIn is an especially helpful place for professionals to network. Twitter and Facebook can also provide you with job hunt connections.

Post from: EveryJoe

Job Hunt Tips: Don’t Forget to Network

I’ve found quite a few great people to follow through this weekly twitter ritual. It’s an interesting phenomenon because the recommendations are usually right on. My own preferences and twitter habits mean that I pretty much only follow someone that I’m truly interested in hearing from and trust for a variety of reasons.

The challenge for me is to think about who I should recommend to my other followers as my own #followfriday recommendations. That’s where the Auto Follow Friday tool comes in.

Auto Follow Friday is very straight-forward. You enter your Twitter username, there’s no need for your password, and based on your twittering habits, the application will recommend a handful of other twitterers that you tweet most based on your previous 100 tweets.

What better recommendation than those people I’ve talked with most recently? I think to expand the tool it would be interesting to select different people based on different criteria on successive weeks.

Find some new folks to follow and dialogue with on twitter with Auto Follow Friday.

Post from: EveryJoe

Twitter Auto-Follow Friday Tool

Speaking with a friend of mine though and they were amazed at how easy it was for someone to find everything they’d said on twitter. Now, let’s clarify, unless you specifically have all of your updates protected, everything you tweet is going into the public timeline for ANYONE to read, not just those who follow you. People need to be aware of this.

Here’s the challenge though, even if you individually block someone from subscribing to your updates or "following" you, they can still follow you on your public timeline and see what you’re saying. Yes, this activity would be very stalker-ish and it’s annoying we have to worry about it, but it is what it is.

I normally am a little irritated when I’m followed by someone that has their updates protected as I believe twitter should be an open forum to some degree. This issue though has me really re-thinking how I feel about that. I would hate to exclude anyone that might have a reason to really be hiding from other individuals from using the service, but I’m not sure what the best answer is for everyone.

Perhaps it’s just education and let people know about the opportunities and risks. Perhaps you have an online persona like I do in "bnpositive", although it wouldn’t be hard to link the too in my case, there’s nothing specifically in my twitter profile that ties that account to my real name.

What do you think is the solution? Were you aware of the issue? Very interested in hearing your feedback and comments.

Image: Edited image from sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

Improved Privacy Needed on Twitter

Spending time in the recruiting business and as a manage for other offices, reviewing applications and doing a quick name search for applicants online was just something I did. I was amazed at what I found sometimes, and more amazed at the stories I’ve read.

I know someone who was looking for a job and shortly after the interview wrote on his blog and called the person that interviewed him an “idiot” and doesn’t know if he could ever work for that company. They were so “screwed” up he wasn’t sure if he could really turn them around and fix anything.

I can tell you right now. If he’d interviewed with me, there’s not a chance he would have gotten the job and you can believe I would have let my own network know about my experience as well.

There’s a balance between being “transparent”, the buzz word of choice for social media, and maintaining a healthy inner dialogue as the article stated.

Image: sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

The Challenge of Social Networks in Business

Sprint has released a new screen saver for their Now network that takes advantage of our quest for information and data. You can pull in your favorite sources of information you want to know about and see them presented on your screen when you’re not busy working. The service also pulls in data from many of the most popular social media networks as well.

My only problem is my computer is rarely sitting unused long enough for me to take advantage of a screen saver. However, I’ve now got the Sprint Now Network screen saver running.

Uncover what’s happening NOW on your computer with Sprint

Post from: EveryJoe

Sprints Now Network Screen Saver

I guess I’m just not sure what the big deal is at this point. Yes obviously there’s an advantage for me to have www.facebook.com/jasonlbean instead of http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502473549. But, awhile back I setup www.bnpositive.com/facebook that automatically redirects to my Facebook URL. I think this method is better than the other to because I can also now gauge how many people are visiting my Facebook profile from a link on my own homepage. If I promote my Facebook profile with this same link, then I capitalize on the popularity of the site and I’m able to track it.

The caveat to this is that this is really only an option for those users on Facebook that have their own domain in the first place. I guess I keep forgetting that there’s a whole lot of people not like me. Facebook may be their only real presence on the web.

Image: Facebook screen grab

Post from: EveryJoe

Something Better Than Facebook Vanity Names

What happens is that you register for the site and as part of completing your profile you provide areas in which you consider yourself having some expertise. Someone then asks a question via IM with Aardvark (you can integrate it with a variety of IM clients) and if the question has keywords related to your areas of expertise you’re sent an IM with the question. There’s also opportunities to answer "extra" questions that may not fit your exact expertise.

Here’s a sample conversation of mine with Aardvark via IM:

aardvark:
Hi Jason, I have an Extra Question that’s not related to your profile…
I have a question about *SEO* – can you help?
(Type ’sure’, ‘pass’, or ‘busy’.)

Sorry I missed you.

Type ’sure’ to see if you can answer the question, or type ‘help’ to learn more about Aardvark.
(Tip: try asking about a *gift recommendation* for the holidays, or get a *travel tip*…)

There’s a variety of other menu’s you can access via IM to find out what other people are searching for or what talents certain people have that are currently online and available for questions.

I love this service, but I can see how it could get interrupting to you during your day with messages automatically coming into your IM client regularly. I’m going to keep playing with it though because I really like the idea of it. It reminds me of how I enjoy using twitter to bounce questions off of my followers and see the results I get.

Give Aardvark a try yourself and sign-up, maybe you’ve got an answer out there for someone, I’m fairly certain you’ve probably got a question you’d like answered in the meantime.

Post from: EveryJoe

Aardvark – Delivering a Bit More in Social Search

As I was visiting through their site and tools, I noticed that the link to their website in their Facebook profile had been tagged as "abusive" by other Facebook users. This was a surprise to the business owner as they’d never spammed anyone using Facebook or repeatedly posted the link to their site in their own updates or messages.

Normally when you see alerts like this the serving website will provide a link for how the owner of the link can follow-up or submit a rebuttal for their site. No such information from Facebook. Does anyone know the procedures for requesting a reason for why a site is submitted as abusive or how to recover your site and links from this status?

Post from: EveryJoe

Recovering From "Abusive" Site in Facebook