We greatly appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.

Please follow our Twitter account @TweetReports for updates. Thank you.

Update:
Although the search app is back online, we’re now tracking down a DNS glitch.

Update:
The connection and DNS issue has been resolved.

Connection Issues by TweetReports. Start searching now.

The new Facebook Timeline is now available for you to activate and try for 7-days before it goes live. We’ll be bringing you resources and how-to articles to help you manage your Facebook Timeline.

Articles are listed in chronological order and updated as we discover new Facebook resources.

Facebook Timeline Resources

• 6 Must-Do Facebook’s Timeline Privacy Tweaks
  2011-12-16 : PCWorld.com
• Designers Behind Facebook Timeline: 5 Keys To Creating A UI With Soul
  2011-12-19 : fastcodesign.com
• Facebook Timeline: 9 things you need to know
  2011-12-16 : USAToday.com
• Facebook Timeline: How to make it look great
  2011-12-16 : WashingtonPost.com
• How to Master Facebook Timeline in 5 Quick Minutes
  2011-12-16 : Wired.com
• How to Use Facebook’s New Timeline Feature (and Hide Your Embarrassing Old Posts)
  2011-12-15 : LifeHacker.com
• How to: Facebook Timeline Cover Photo Sizes
  2011-12-17 : QuickOnlineTips.com
• HOW TO: Make the Most of the New Facebook Timeline Cover Photo
  2011-09-11 : Mashable.com

Facebook Timeline Resources by TweetReports. Start searching now.

Let’s fix that.

I wish when I did a twitter search for ‘maine’ and ‘adoption’, the return wasn’t all related to coon cats,;-)

September 12, 2011 7:55 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@tracyandmicah

are looking to adopt

Twitter Search Tips Video

@tweetreports This was so helpful! THANK YOU!!!

October 4, 2011 6:59 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@tracyandmicah

are looking to adopt

Do you have a Twitter Search question? Let us know — thanks!

How To Get Rid of Pesky Coon Cats by TweetReports. Start searching now.

Talk about Twitter offering analytics has been going around for some time now.

First, there was speculation about whether Twitter would even offer any type of analytics to their users.

Then Twitter announced they were going to offer free analytics, but making it available to businesses first. The free option for all users never materialized.

But on Tuesday, Twitter announced they were releasing a tool that “helps website owners understand how much traffic they receive from Twitter and the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their sites”.

Here’s a screenshot of the analytics dashboard.

Screenshot of Twitter’s Analytics Tool Dashboard

What Will Be Measured

Twitter’s analytics tools will provide three types of measurements;

1. How much your website content is being shared across the Twitter network
2. Traffic sent to your site from Twitter
3. Effectiveness of your Tweet Button integration

These are all great statistics to know and will make it a lot easier for website owners to measure key metrics.

Until now, if you wanted to effectively measure how much your website content was being shared on Twitter you had to create and monitor special searches in other Twitter apps. For example, we have a separate search column set up in @Tweetdeck to monitor mentions of our base URL. Although this gives us live notifications, it doesn’t provide an ongoing accounting. Which is why, for actively monitored reports and analytics, we use TweetReports (you knew that was coming, right?).

If you wanted to measure traffic sent to your website from Twitter you either had to create special operators in Google Analytics and/or monitor any internal tracking for Twitters t.co URL shortener.

As for monitoring effectiveness of Twitter’s tweet button, nothing has been available.

What We’re Really Excited About

What really has us excited isn’t just that measuring will be easier but that Twitter is “committed to releasing” a Twitter Web Analytics API so we can add their analytics directly into the Twitter reporting tools we already offer.

We’ll keep you informed as new information is made available.

Twitter Releasing Web Analytics Tool by TweetReports. Start searching now.

And today, I’d like to discuss my personal insights and beliefs about what customer service really means.

S.W.A.T.

When I was 20 years old, I got my first retail sales job. I worked for a local sporting goods store selling camping equipment and athletic shoes. And one of the first sales lessons I was taught was S.W.A.T (Sell What’s Available Today). The premise was simple. If a customer was looking for specific product and the store didn’t sell it or have it in stock, then the salesperson tried to sell the customer a different or similar product that was in stock.

So becoming a successful salesperson meant learning how to identify a customer’s pain, their price threshold to remove it, and what product was in-stock, right now, at a price they would be willing to pay — even if it meant the product didn’t meet all of their needs. And because I was working on commission, I learned very fast, and got very good, at doing just that. I had to. Otherwise, I didn’t get paid.

Fast forward a few decades later.

Coconut Macaroons

One of my favorite “cookies” is coconut macaroons. I just love them and my daughter had never had one before. So there I was, in a local grocery store, trying to hunt down a package of coconut macaroons. But I couldn’t find them anywhere so I asked a store clerk to help me.

He walked me around the store, up and down aisles, looking for the macaroons. And when he can’t find them, he tells me they either must not carry them, they’re not in stock, or they only sell them during the holiday season. And, of course, the next thing he does is offer me a package of coconut cookies.

All I can do is sigh and shake my head because over the years, I’ve learned that customer service — real customer service — isn’t tied into trying to make a sale right now. Real customer service is about helping customers solve their problem even if it means losing a sale by sending them to a competitor.

I truly believe that.

In Search of Charms

A few weeks later my daughter wanted to give her mom a new charm for her Pandora bracelet. And after my daughter spent a lot of time searching through the Pandora website for the perfect charm, she found one. It was now in my hands to go to the jewelry store to buy it. That was the easy part.

When I got to the jewelry store, I told the sales person exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately, that specific charm happened to be one of the few that were sold out. The salesperson told me they could order one but they wouldn’t have it in stock until after my wife’s birthday.

What the salesperson did next surprised me.

Understanding how important it was to my daughter to give my wife that specific charm, instead of jumping into S.W.A.T mode, he actually recommended I try a store up the street. The salesperson told me that although the shop was mostly geared to selling purses and other fashion items, they also sold Pandora charms.

I was speechless.

I couldn’t believe I finally found a salesperson who understood what it meant to actually help their customers.

I rushed off to the other store and was extremely happy to find that, even with a limited selection of charms, they had the exact charm my daughter wanted to give her mom. I was so grateful for that salesperson helping me, I made an extra trip back to the store to thank him and the store manager.

What Happened To The Search Results?

A big segue, I know, but there’s a point to my story.

For those of you who weren’t aware, our streaming, real-time search results stopped working last week. And even though TweetReports is still in a testing “Beta” phase, it caught me completely off guard.

To make matters worse, the e-mails sent to users notifying them of the issue were apparently never received. Of course, we posted updates to our Twitter account but that doesn’t always ensure followers will actually see it.

As you can imagine, I’ve been inundated with e-mails, support tickets, phone calls, direct messages, and public tweets from users who are unable to get real-time search results, reports, and transcripts for their Twitter chats. Most feedback has been quite pointed while others have been very patient and supportive.

Even though I completely understand their frustration (I depend on TweetReports for my own personal clients), it doesn’t solve their problem. What does solve their problem is the ability to get real-time search results, analytics, and Twitter chat transcripts. But until we can resolve our real-time streaming issue, the solution is to provide REAL customer service.

That not only means providing our users with updates as they’re available, but to truly backup my beliefs with action. So, as the saying goes, it’s time to walk the walk.

Twitter Tools

As you may know, every Twitter search tool provides a completely different feature sets and user interface. Because every user has different needs, one Twitter tool may work great for some people, but not for others. So here are my suggestions to help you with your Twitter search and reporting needs.

For real-time search results, you can always use Twitter’s free search. Other apps you can try are; Twazzup, or Topsy.

For trending topics, try; Tweetmeme and Twitt(url)ly.

For Twitter chat transcripts try; Hashtracking and curateDE.

For analytics, you can try; PostRank, Twitalyzer, Row Feeder, and Radian6.

And although Buffer doesn’t fall under any of the above app categories, they have a great tool backed with great people.

I know many businesses may think it’s completely crazy to send customers to a competitor. That, by doing so, they’ll actually lose business. But I firmly believe the opposite is true.

Granted, the American Jewelry Company I went to lost a $50 sale that day. But what they gained in return is much, much bigger. They gained a dedicated customer that will keep coming back to their store because I trust them to have my best interests at heart — even if it means losing a sale. And that’s something they couldn’t have bought for ten times that amount!

What’s Next?

As most people know, TweetReports is a bootstrap business. And although I know how to code, that’s not my field of expertise. That said, when the real-time search results stopped streaming my first response was to jump in and see if I could resolve the issue myself. It soon became clear it would take more than my skills to fix the connection issue. Which is exactly why I hired 5 Elements — a truly amazing company with even more amazing developers (@mcatlett). Unlike other programmers I’ve had the misfortune to work with, 5 Elements doesn’t just blindly do what you tell them, they provide incredible insight and suggestions to make things better and save money on development time. And that’s what you need from a great developer.

The problem is that 5 Elements is so good at what they do, they don’t have time to work on the connection issue until Tuesday. Yes, Tuesday. You can only imagine the pain in my stomach when I heard that. But if you want the best, sometimes you have to stand in line. And even though it means more downtime, I know the end result will be a solid solution that’s best for our app and for our loyal users.

In the meantime, I’d like to apologize to all users for any inconvenience this issue has possibly created and I have already started issuing refunds to subscribers for the down time. Granted, even though our terms of service explicitly state a no-refunds policy, I think it’s the right thing to do. After all, no matter what you sell, all any business really has to offer their customers, is service.

Thank you,
Michael Kristof

UPDATE: The streaming search results issue has been resolved.

Coconut Macaroons and Customer Service by TweetReports. Start searching now.

Good question. In fact, I get asked about it all the time.

Twitter’s first tweet was posted by Twitter Founder, Jack Dorsey @jack on March 21, 2006.

just setting up my twttr

March 21, 2006 3:50 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jack

Jack Dorsey

Shortly afterward, Jack began inviting coworkers — and the rest is history.

inviting coworkers

March 21, 2006 4:02 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jack

Jack Dorsey

If you look at Jacks first tweet on Twitter, you’ll notice the status id number was “20”. Until July 2009, status update IDs were sequential. Then, on September 21, 2010, Twitter implemented their Snowflake update — a Tweet ID generation service which changed the status ID numbers to be composed of a timestamp, a worker number, and a sequence number.

I’m sure, from a technical standpoint, this made a lot of sense internally. But by changing the status IDs to be something other sequentially numbered, it suddenly made a difficult task of figuring out the total number of tweets.

Check out the Twitter Clock for our real-time Twitter statistics.

What Was Twitter’s First Tweet by TweetReports. Start searching now.

We grumbled a lot over beers and tee boxes back then about how much of a dummy he was and how, if we ever got the chance, we were going to do it right. We were going to run a company by the people and for the people — and the people would appreciate that — and pay us because what we were trying to do made sense. It wouldn’t just be business as usual.

Then, with all that money, we wouldn’t have to hire employees. We could just hire robots like the one Pauly got for his birthday in Rocky IV to do all of the work for us. We’d just collect the money and occasionally walk around the office with loaded shotguns just so the robots would remember who was boss.

Admittedly some of the revolutionary ideas tended to get off track as the night went on and the drinks were refilled.

Ten years later, older, wiser and soberer — but with a continued creative entrepreneurial spirit — we launched TweetReports.com with some of the most advanced search features and in-depth Twitter analysis tools available. We started with one idea and kept refining and adding but, all the while, making sure that Joe Average business owner could use and understand what they were seeing.

Along the way we would shake our heads at companies that would employ a perversion of the freemium model: sign up for a free account and company X would show you a part of what you could get if you had a paid account and then claim it as full functionality. But it really wasn’t.

We also disliked the idea of requiring users to commit to a $ubscription in order to get a free trial. You know what I’m talking about. Where the user provides payment information upfront and, when the free trail ends, they’re automatically charged for your first month of service.

No way we’re going to do that.

The Plan

We decided to buck the system of how everyone else was doing business and create a new way. A way that would be better for our customers. So we created a two-fold “free” method.

A free account with one of our more revolutionary features, tweet bookmarking (save, tag and search within your bookmarked tweets), and visibility of all the other tools — or — pay a dollar for a full functioning, kitchen sink, bells whistles and everything included 14-day trail account.

Just a buck! Surely for a product as superior as ours, people would pay a buck for a two week evaluation.

And it’s not like we wanted charge a buck so we could make a buck. We just wanted to charge enough prevent spammers from signing up for hundreds upon hundreds of accounts and, hopefully, cover some overhead to boot. After all, this Twitter tool endeavor is bootstrapped.

That way, people would see the full potential of our search and monitoring tool and how it can help their business. Then, if they chose to upgrade to a paid account when their trial ended, we’d offer a discount. If not, their account would revert to a free membership and they’d still have plenty of great features to use.

Most importantly, they wouldn’t be automatically charged a monthly fee because they simply forgot to cancel their free trial before it expired.

To us, taking money from someone who didn’t want to spend it doesn’t seem fair or the right thing to do — it’s just bad Ju-ju. And it’s a horrible way to start a relationship with a customer, even if they decided to not use our services.

And the cool thing is you don’t even need an account to use our Twitter search tool — anyone can use it for free. Just type in a search and hit Enter.

The idea was pure genius. Revolutionary!

This showed pride and confidence in our product. It was like making a movie with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman — how could it not work? The whole idea was conceived around doing the right thing for our customers.

Please allow me to express our success mathematically:

Lead Balloon x Crickets = Our Success.

Yep, didn’t quite work like we thought. We got a few free accounts and a grand total of two people paid a dollar to try the full functionality.

Two.

After a year of R&D and development we made enough money on our revolutionary idea to buy half a Venti latte… ten years ago… from Starbucks.

So if what we thought was the right thing to do for our customers ended up not being the right thing to do for them or our business, then the $60,000 question became, “What is the right thing to do?”

So we did what every bootstrapped, Twitter social media monitoring service should do.

We asked people on Twitter.

The feedback was very enlightening.

First and foremost, people told us that they shouldn’t have to pay — anything — to try a service.

Secondly, they didn’t want to go through the hassle of providing payment information for only $1.

The end result? We listened.

Enter The New Plan: Version 2.0

If what we were doing wasn’t working — and people were very clear about what they did and didn’t want — we would change our sign-up and monetization model to fall in step with more conventional thinking — to a point.

So version 2.0 allowed people to sign-up for a full-featured 14-day trial, for free.

It included every tool we had in the toolbox. No credit cards, no PayPal accounts, no 25-year-old pop culture Ishtar references. If a user decided to not upgrade to a paid account after 14-days, their account would turn into a free “Basic” account. No commitment. No automatic payments.

The Twitter-ati had spoken. We listened. And everyone was happy!

Not really.

Sure, we got tons of people signing up for free accounts. Some of them actually logged in to use it. And even a few big-hearted folks reported programming bugs and offered great suggestions for improving the service (we really love them!).

Although we saw a huge spike in spam, bounced emails and fake accounts, we didn’t see an increase in conversions to paid accounts.

Apparently, giving away a free 14-day trial without requiring a commitment by the user is a great way to build inflated, non-active, account numbers but does very little to actually build your business.

The other issue we faced was educating potential users that we were truly providing a no-obligation, no payment, free trial where they could use all of the search and brand monitoring features we have to offer.

Ironically, very few people believed it.

They were so conditioned to how everyone else did business, it appeared they couldn’t make the leap that there was another way. In fact, we had users tell us there was something wrong with our sign-up process because we didn’t ask for their payment information. Seriously.

On top of that, no matter how many times we said, “TweetReports is a free Twitter search tool. Anyone can use it to search at any time.” no one seemed to believe it. Granted, our paid accounts include advanced analytics and reporting, but the core search engine is absolutely free.

Enter The New, New Plan: Version 3.0

If history teaches us anything, it’s don’t try to recreate the wheel. Then, of course, if developers never tried to create something better, different, and more useful, you’d be reading this via smoke signals.

So we tried to create a better process that’s a win/win for both the customer and the business. What we failed to understand was there were two possible reasons why so many online services use the same sign up model;

The first is where we initially landed; Everyone was using the same model because it’s simply what everyone does.

When we realized what the second reason was, we moved forward with our new, new plan — which was really an old plan but new to us.

Offer three subscription accounts. Each includes a free 7-day trial. And when the trail ends, the automatic subscription payment kicks-in.

Sound familiar?

Yep, it the same sign-up model so many other online services were using — that we didn’t like — nor wanted to use. But the truth is, the “other” reason why so many businesses use this model is because it works.

Customers are familiar with it. Everything is clearly spelled out. So when they sign-up, they know exactly what will happen and when. It also means the people who do sign-up up are genuinely better leads. And better leads mean more conversions. And that’s exactly what happened.

We’ve seen more sign-ups and more conversions than with any of the other two “revolutionary” methods (the numbers are actually kind of scary).

Now, everyone is happy.

What we learned

1. No one likes to buy anything sight unseen. People want to be able to try a service without paying. As an example, just imagine what would happen to the fashion industry if people weren’t allowed to try on clothes or shoes before buying them.
2. Listen to your customers. I mean really listen. But listening doesn’t mean you have to implement everything they ask for. Otherwise, you’ll spend all your time and resources building a better mousetrap only to give it away for free — because that’s what they asked for.
3. Study your competition — even other similar type services that aren’t direct competitors. Watch what they do and how they do it — especially if they’re successful and have been around for while. Chances are, they already made plenty of mistakes. Which means what they’re now doing works. It’s an invaluable way to avoid potential pitfalls.
4. Don’t be afraid to try something new or create something different. Even if it means going completely against what everyone else is doing. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to fail. Just fail quickly, learn from it, and adapt what you’ve learned to your business. Repeat.

What are your thoughts about the Freemium model and “free” trials that require payment information upfront. Love them? Hate them? What would you do different?

What do you think about our initial efforts? Now that we’ve changed to a more traditional model are you more likely to give TweetReports a test drive?

Let us know your thoughts, we’re always looking for feedback and improvement ideas. We welcome suggestions from anyone willing to share — except Wayne. We’ve had enough of that guy.

When trying to do the right thing for your customers isn’t the right thing to do by TweetReports. Start searching now.

Articles are listed in chronological order and updated as we discover new resources.

Facebook Fan Pages

• 14 tips for a successful Facebook page marketing
  2011-06-29 : PRDaily.com
• 16 Creative Ways to Make Your Facebook Timeline Cover Photo
  2011-11-01 : SocialMediaExaminer
• 16 Facebook Applications to Boost Popularity of Facebook Fan Page
  2010-04-04 : wchingya.com
• 25 Brilliant Examples of Facebook Brand Pages
  2010-08-18 : Eeconsultancy.com
• 26 Tips for Enhancing Your Facebook Page
  2010-12-07 : SocialMediaExaminer.com
• 3 Simple Ways to Rapidly Create Custom Facebook Landing Tabs
  2010-10-19 : SocialMediaExaminer.com
• 5 Staggeringly Simple Ways to Create Custom Facebook Landing Tabs
  2010-11-09 : ConvinceAndConvert.com
• 5 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Page
  2011-09-19 : SocialMediaExaminer.com
• Add an iFrame Facebook custom Tab
  2011-02-11 : PaulKortman.com
• Designing A Facebook Fan Page: Showcases, Tutorials, Resources
  2010-07-08 : Mashable.com
• Facebook Brand Page Timeline Checklist
  2012-03-12 : Graywolf’s SEO Blog
• Facebook Changes Business Page Design
  2011-02-11 : FreshID.com
• Facebook Tabs: What They Are & How to Use Them
  2010-08-19 : ReadWriteWeb.com
• Facebook XTab. Shockingly Easy-to-use Facebook Page Builder
  2011-10-16 : Facebook Tabs
• Five Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page
  2010-03-28 : Mashable.com
• Five Fantastic Facebook Fan Page Ideas to Learn From
  2010-02-27 : OpenForum.com
• How to Add Google Analyticsto Your Facebook Fan Page
  2010-03-24 : SocialMediaExaminer.com
• How To Add Video To Your Facebook Welcome Page
  2011-01-12 : ReelSEO.com
• How to Build a Facebook Landing Page for Your Business
  2010-02-17 : OpenForum.com
• How to Build and Manage a Loyal Facebook Fan Base
  2010-10-07 : MarketItWrite.com
• How To Create a Compelling Facebook Presence That Generates Profits
  2010-10-07 : MarketItWrite.com
• How to Create Custom Facebook Pages
  2010-10-18 : Digital Inspiration
• How To Create Facebook Community Guidelines
  2011-06-07 : SocialFresh.com
• How To Create the Perfect Facebook Fan Page
  2009-12-01 : TechiPedia.com
• How to Optimize Your Facebook Page for Visual Branding
  2011-03-28 : SocialMediaExaminer.com
• How To Use The New Facebook Photo Viewer As A Marketing Tool
  2011-02-15 : MariSmith.com
• HOW TO: Improve Engagement on Your Brand’s Facebook Page
  2011-04-06 : Mashable.com
• Make Your Facebook Fan Page a Party
  2011-02-23 : ProBlogger.com
• Seven FBML Examples to Rock Your Facebook Fan Page
  2010-03-22 : WebDistortion.com
• Simple Tips For Adding A New Facebook iFrames Tab
  3011–03-03 : SocialFresh.com
• Top 10 Facebook Apps for Building Custom Pages & Tabs
  2011-07-07 : SocialMediaExaminer.com
• Top 50 Branded Facebook Pages
  2010-06-30 : IgniteSocialMedia.com

Facebook Fan Pages by TweetReports. Start searching now.

Specifically, we listen to you talk about the Twitter search features you want and need in a Twitter search engine. Here are just a few samples of what Twitter users have been saying (and they’ve been saying it a lot).

Would be nice if #Twitter had a filter option so that when I search for something I can specify a language

January 19, 2011 6:31 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@GaryMcC

Gary McCombe

Twitter advanced search: useful, but buried. http://bit.ly/gPMzfe Would like to filter by user’s language, age, rep #socialmedia #twitter

January 10, 2011 11:39 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@RobertPierosh

Robert Pierosh

I wish there was a desktop Twitter app that would filter out other languages in a saved search :/

January 11, 2011 2:51 pm via Seesmic WebReplyRetweetFavorite

@androinerd

Kirsty Lawer

Your wish is our command.

We have just completed adding a new search filter so you can more easily find, track and monitor language specific tweets.

TweetReports Filter Results by Language

For example; if you want to search Twitter for all tweets about “twitter” but only in Spanish — you can do that.

Or perhaps you only need to track tweets in French: yep, you can do that too.

There are 19 available language filters.

• Arabic (العربية)
• Danish (dansk)
• Dutch (Nederlands)
• English
• Farsi / Persian (فارسی)
• Finnish (suomen kieli)
• French (français)
• German (Deutsch)
• Hungarian (Magyar)
• Icelandic (Íslenska)
• Italian (Italiano)
• Japanese (日本語)
• Norwegian (Norsk)
• Polish (polski)
• Portuguese (Português)
• Russian (русский язык)
• Spanish (español)
• Swedish (Svenska)
• Thai (ไทย)

Remember, just because you selected to filter your Twitter search by a language doesn’t mean there will be results found for it. There’s just no telling when people from different parts of the world and time zones will be tweeting or what they may be tweeting about.

A big “Thank You” to all of our users who suggested this feature. We truly appreciate you feedback!

Filter Twitter Searches By Language by TweetReports. Start searching now.

As last reported, Twitter claims more than 100 million new users signed on in 2010. And as of last September, Twitter was averaging 370,000 new sign-ups per day.

It was originally estimated Twitter would hit the 200 million registered accounts sometime in January 2011. Our estimation was Dec. 18, 2010. But the increase in new account signups has us all rehashing our math.

Twitter Clock Stats as of Friday, December 17, 2010

Even with a recent Pew Internet study indicating 21% off all Twitter accounts are inactive, the 200 Million mark is still impressive.

Twitter Hits 200 Million Registered Accounts by TweetReports. Start searching now.