Miss Nicole Jensen

Two days ago the tubes were aflutter with scrambling tweeps and Facebook geeks, hunting everywhere online for word regarding the March 30th disappearance of a 15-year-old from Brisbane. Today I was browsing past my Facebook groups page and found the group Missing Teenager: Ethan Johnson, Brisbane, Australia was at the top of my groups for having the most activity. Ethan had been found safe and well!

While the bulk of the official search was taken up by police, the Facebook group members made suggestions for online haunts left unsearched:

“Have we considered looking into any online communities which Ethan is a member? e.g. World of Warcraft, interest forums, MSN contacts, MySpace, Garry’s Mod, Xbox Live? If we know Ethan’s username* then I’m sure my 15yo son would be happy to check his contacts/forums etc.”

Facebook was also a source of comfort to Ethan’s family, and of suggestions from others who had missed (and found!) loved ones:

“My mum’s friend son has an illness & disappeared from home for several weeks, in the end he was found interstate with some friends. As Ethan is/was in Sydney, maybe he has friends in Sydney or the surrounding areas. There are some music festivals on this weekend in NSW for the Easter long weekend… maybe Ethan had some friends attending and wanted to join?”

“My Aspergers son was taken by his father who disappeared with him and it took five weeks for me to get him back. Once again, different from this because I at least knew who he was with (if not where) but I still know the pain of not knowing where or how your child is. I also know that his type of Aspergers means he has an obsession with his computer and spends hours on it socialising online. If he went missing, because of this trait*, his computer is the first place I would look.”

The final message from Ethan’s family has been posted online and thanks everyone who helped in their search in any way:

“There are so many people in this group – some of you have been here from the beginning, and others only joined us recently, but you have all contributed to helping us get the word out; and many of you have helped to keep Tammy’s spirits up while she sat helplessly at home waiting for her boy to be found.

All we can say is: Thank you.

Thank you from Tammy – she’s over the moon at the moment, and busy as all get-out answering phones:
Thank you from Brett, who is finally seeing a smile on Tammy’s face for the first time in almost two weeks:
Thank you from Amber, who is elated that her big brother is coming home:
Thank you from Donny – you people have made her proud to be a Facebook member! 

No one really expected this kind of a turn-out, and your support for Ethan and his family has been powerful, wonderous, almost miraculous, and something for you to be PROUD of!”

If you are following the Facebook group thus far, please don’t leave just yet; Ethan’s family wish to show him the 7,700 people who wanted him to stay safe.

I love social media. Did I ever tell you that?

EDIT: A comment on this article reads: “Why isn’t this all over the television? When Daniel Morcombe went missing it was everywhere. I found out about this through Facebook… So there must be hundreds of people who are unaware.” Another reader agreed. What do you think?

Another comment corrects me, quite rightly:

I run the Australian Missing Persons Register, a volunteer service to help the families of the missing, without charge…the bulk of the search was NOT undertaken by the police, it was undertaken by me, and my associate… It was actually me who located Ethan and Kevin who drove 2000km in two days to pick Ethan up and return him to QLD. Using the internet to locate the missing is something I do every day, all day for the last four years with a good success rate.

Many thanks, Nicole.

*which makes me ponder one’s Web Wills. How would people use your online network activities to find you if you were lost? What would they do with your online accounts if you couldn’t be? Another blog for another day…

The blog I kept talking about is finally here, combining my love for my favourite social network and my favourite gig of running events. Here’s the tricks you can use to make running an event through the Twittersphere just that little bit easier and more likely of success.

Twtvite

Basically an invitation application through which you can send event details to tweeps everywhere. You can limit the number of RSVPs, see and receive comments from who has RSVD’d, display tweets related to your event (along with #hashtags*), display it on Google maps and calendars, AND you can embed it on your website. I’m not sure of any event managers who would be willing to sacrifice Facebook events from their social media strategy in order to focus just on Twtvite, but it might just be further along the road for that to occur.

Twtpoll

Twtpoll is quite the sweetie for very simple market research on Twitter and, like Twtvite, Twtpoll is run by @Twtapps, who regularly improve their apps for Twitter. Not sure if your event will run hot? Just ask your followers. I’ve used it to pin-point preferred dates, times, venues… polls are awesome!

TwitterCamp

Show off what others are saying about your event while you’re enjoying it! TwitterCamp is a desktop application that allows you to monitor tweets from your event attendees. The application was built for an event and since then has developed further, using the Adobe AIR runtime and Twitter Search API. The application is especially suited for running on large displays such as plasmas, LCDs, and projectors. I even hear you can customize the interface, but to what degree I haven’t explored as of yet. 

Pretty much all you have to do is have a large monitor connected to a PC, both Adobe AIR and TwitterCamp, mess around with the aesthetics a little, then make sure that the screen can be read easily by attendees. Bingo! The easiest way to show off your fantastic and up-to-date events 2.0 skills.

Retweetist

Keeps track of who is retweeted the most, you included! Handy to view what event tweets people find interesting. However it seems to be merely a search of “RT” and your username within same tweets from other users, so if they merely mention retweeting in a tweet directed at you, this is included in the statistics. So not so accurate, but still pretty nifty to have the data in one place.

Splitweet

This the Twitter web client you need if you have multiple accounts and would like to keep track of mentions without going through an RSS feed with Twitter Search. Whether you have accounts for each event you’re managing or just one for yourself, you are able to see your timeline for each account all together, with icons for each user you’re following, relating to which account you’re following them with. Good to see which of your events has the more active Tweeps, as also other functions too. I like this one, although I’m still getting used to username links going to a profile hosted on Splitweet instead of the user’s Twitter profile.

Tinker

Tinker shows you relevant real-time conversations from social media sources like Facebook and Twitter. Basically, it is a function like the RSS function of Twitter Search. You can also embed your Tinker event stream on your website. I’ve not tested this one out a whole lot yet, but I can see it growing rapidly after it jumps out of beta mode and stops showing TV show premiers so much. (This is the Internet age now, no one cares about TV show premiers. And are they even an event as such? Argument for another day)

Tweetlater

I’ve used Tweetlater for only one thing; automatic tweets relative to allowing sponsors adequate exposure from an event account. NEVER use Tweetlater for automatic “thanks for following us!” direct messages. No tweep will come to your event if you do this. But as for the actual application, Tweetlater is quite useful for many, many things and hence it is quite powerful and can go wrong easily. I advise not going into Tweetlater lightly with the idea you will win the Twittersphere within a snap. 

Dishonourable Mention: Qwitter.

Enough has been said about them to justify this, trust me. Just before I started this blog post I received my second lot of 30-something e-mails from them within hours. Qwitter is a service I have tried to block a number of times with little success. I hope they’re working on it, but until then I’m using FriendorFollow to clean up my Twitter lists.

*Post coming up soon explaining hashtags and other Twitter tid-bits you’ve just GOT to know. Subscribe to my posts by email to find out when!

This afternoon, the lovely people on my Twitter list decided to help me in my search for employment!

Huge thanks to Clare Lancaster for starting this chain of tweets and to all who did RT. You’re all fantastic. Including those who have brainstormed with me and linked to never-ending Twitter job searching sites. There will be some creative methods to “find this woman a job” coming about soon!

In other news, Twestival is on all over the world on Thursday. Have you bought your ticket yet? Come and join us at the Brisbane Twestival for fun, games, great entertainment and good times; all raising much-needed funds for those thirsty in the world.  I’m so excited!