We’ve just added Twitter Search

Posted by Alex de Carvalho on Friday, August 15th, 2008

What a great first week! We’d like to thank everyone who signed up to the public Beta release.

As expected, some of you found some bugs, which we fixed as quickly as we could. There are still a couple of issues we’re aware of and which will take a bit longer to resolve. One of them is the +Buzz box, which we know we have to redo. Another is some funny stuff the CSS is doing, which we’ll be addressing.

We’ve also received lots of new ideas and great suggestions. We’ve documented all of them and will revisit them often as we plan out our development map. There’s some very exciting stuff we’d love to do.

But first things first: Twitter Search is now on!

We’ve been talking with the Twitter team to make sure we were complying with the correct use of their API, and we’re glad to say got the green light this afternoon!

What does this mean? In addition to mentions in blogs, you may now also track your mentions within the growing active and passionate Twitter community. Because Twitter is the most widely adopted micro-blogging and public messaging service, news often breaks there first. With its ease of use and brevity (tweets are limited to 140 characters), people run to Twitter with their good news … and their rants.

As Brian Solis, Principal of the PR agency Futureworks, describes:

“The crossroads of traditional PR and Social Media is on an inevitable path to a very public boiling point. In the realm of Social Media, conversations are king …. Twitter is one of the most powerful conversation tools among early adopters.”

The following screen shows what a persistent Twitter search in StartPR looks like. Shortly after we announced we turned Twitter Search on (bottom-most result below) this afternoon, we started seeing results for one of the topics we’re tracking, the keyword “StartPR” (the first three results below). Mentions in StartPR are listed in reverse chronology, with most recent results at the top:

20080816-dwh1gacqej9ykxugjjsa8ek88w Weve just added Twitter Search

The availability of Twitter Search made our own lives easier and we’d love to hear what you think.

Oh … and if you’re on Twitter, you may find us at: @StartPR, @brbreslin, @xavierb, and @alexdc. If you’re new to Twitter, please sign up and say hi!

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There’s always a first mention!

Posted by Alex de Carvalho on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

So the cobbler’s children have no shoes? We think that’s a tired cliché.

As the creators of a service to track mentions in social media, we track our own keywords using StartPR. This post describes how go about it …

So we log in throughout the day to see whether anyone has blogged about us. The screenshot below shows a dashboard of results for our permanent search on “startpr”. Among the mentions we found, these are the results we’ve “Favorited” (bookmarked):

startprdashboard2 Theres always a first mention!

This is handy because all we had to do was log in throughout the day to check on the progress of these posts, as well as to see if there were new ones. As we read the blog posts and made notes, our activity got recorded in the dashboard.

One of the posts got on Digg, and we came back often to see whether more people had dugg the post. Did someone comment on it? I also checked to see whether Brian or Xavier had assigned me any tasks related to our results today. It was very easy to do as it only required me to login. One of our friends, Fabrice Epelboin, “likened it to a mailbox for blog posts … now you can manage your PR like you do your mail!”. We like the analogy … what do you think?

We’d like to thank Bilal at StartupMeme, who blogged us first and offfered this insightful review:

The most important ingredient of the social web is conversations, StartPR lets you coordinate your teams response to bloggers in order to engage them and build solid relationships over time. In addition to engaging with bloggers and media types, the service enables you to engage with your clients and users who are arguably the most important people for you. StartPR provides features to keep track of your interactions with your clients and whether or not you have been able to satisfy them.

We’ve included a link good for 250 Beta accounts to StartPR in the comments to the post.

By the way, the post got dugg, and we’d appreciate your vote if you can spare a few seconds of your time:
Digg - Engage and build solid relationship with Bloggers and users

We also got mentioned by KillerStartups.com, which tracks all the new media services. We know it’s a lot to ask, but we would appreciate your vote at KillerStartups as well!

StartPR.com - Track Buzz On Your Brand | Visit StartPR.com

Finally, we got reviewed by Kaye D. Sweetser, Ph.D., APR, who received an invite from the respected PR and social media Professor Robert French of Auburn University. In her thoughtful post, “Gathering the conversation,” Kaye shares her likes, her dislikes, and what she calls a “wouldn’t it be cool” list. We appreciate the feedback - it’s how we learn.

By the way, wouldn’t it be cool if all brands tracked their online mentions?

What are the important keywords you should be tracking? How do you track them today?

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Invitations to StartPR

Posted by Alex de Carvalho on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

We’re pleased to say that StartPR is ready and we’ve started sending out invitations!

Those who signed up will be getting invites this week. If you’d also like to take part, please sign up here http://startpr.com/public/signup and we’ll include you in our next set of invites.

What is StartPR?

StartPR helps you find, manage and respond to online mentions of what’s important to you. People are engaged in conversations with each other about your company, your brands, your products and your services … but  are you listening? StartPR is the easier, more effective, and more organized way to keep up to date and engage with bloggers and social network users.

How does it work?

StartPR is a social media analysis platform for workgroups. It includes a multi-user environment, user account management, multi-client awareness, and delegation and tracking features.

After you login, you’ll be able to track up to three topics and invite another person to your workgroup. This way, you may track your topics and share and delegate actions with someone else.

Dashboard

To illustrate part of the multi-user functionality, the screenshot on the right shows that Brian B. and I are tracking mentions of StartPR. As we work through the mentions and blog posts about StartPR, our activity is recorded and we can assign tasks to each other, as well as write notes to remind ourselves of what needs to be done.

There are some of the features that will help you manage the online conversation about your interests. We’ll be talking about the other features on this blog, and we look forward to your feedback and suggestions.

We truly hope you enjoy this early preview of StartPR!

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Introducing CrunchTrends!

Posted by Alex de Carvalho on Thursday, August 7th, 2008

We’re pleased to launch CrunchTrends!

We’ve paired TechCrunch’s CrunchBase with StartPR to return the online mentions of the over 6,000 companies and 5,000 products listed. Now, you can browse through or search for the companies or services you’re interested in, and find the latest buzz about them.

Here’s how it works

When people mention a product or company online, StartPR picks it up. We then combine it with CrunchBase to create a list of popular companies with the latest posts about them. We also pull all the newest companies that are added to CrunchBase and then display all the buzz associated with each one. When you select a company or product, CrunchTrends displays information and links to the latest mentions; it graphs the number of mentions over time; and, it provides profile information about the company.

What do you think? How can we make this more useful for you?

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