Scanning the twitterverse for current awareness Wendy Reynolds Ontario Workplace Tribunals Library April 2009

Twitter by itself is an endless stream of useful/not so useful stuff.

Tools like Tweetdeck allow you to manage the stream of tweets to identify content of use.

The magnifying glass activates Twitter search. The interface is very “Googly” – use quotation marks for phrases, and Boolean operators to broaden or narrow your search.

Use Twitter Search to create useful searches before going to Tweetdeck – search strategies are not editable in Tweetdeck. Keep your searches broad in order to maximize the number of hits. Precision quickly leads to zero hits.

Hey! Here’s one of my clients!

Editing searches doesn’t seem to be possible, but you can erase a faulty strategy and re-search. New columns are created for every new search.

These tools allow you to manage a specific column. This toolbar gives you access to tools which allow you to tweet, search, and use tools such as Groups.

The Groups tool allows you to review feeds from sources you choose. Here’s how I created an Ontario government group.