If you tweet about the police, the flu and even social media, there’s a chance that the Department of Homeland Security is watching you. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has just released a list of hundreds of keywords the DHS is tracking on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites – how many are you tweeting?
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While it’s important to pen great tweets, it’s equally (and some would say more) important to listen well on Twitter. Your homework for this weekend is to brainstorm a list of keywords that you can use to monitor conversations happening on Twitter that are relevant to you, your brand, or your interests.
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The CIA is actively monitoring social media, and Twitter specifically, to help predict uprisings or measure the pulse of a particular region.

In their Virginia-based “unassuming brick building”, the CIA follows up to 5 million tweets per day to get a real-time handle on events and moods around the world.
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Forget celebrity gossip and tracking weather patterns – the US Department of Homeland Security sees Twitter as a potential goldmine of intelligence pertaining to possible domestic threats. The question is, how do you find the gold nuggets buried in the rubble?
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The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, has announced a social media plan that would include keyword and sentiment analysis on Twitter. So if you’re badmouthing their money-management skills, they might just tune into your feed.
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Twitter is a fantastic place to host a contest. You have a direct line to your customers and fans, you can easily set a time limit, and you can even use a hashtag to track it easily. However, there are some things you’ve got to consider when setting up your Twitter contest, or else the scammers, hackers, and otherwise deceptive people will start coming out of the woodwork and ruin all your best intentions.
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Lists are one of the most potentially powerful features of Twitter, but they’re not used to their full potential, largely because Twitter itself hasn’t maximized on this feature. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t harness Twitter lists to work for you.

Here’s how to use lists to monitor influencers in your niche, so you can stay on top of the news, trends, and topics that affect your brand.
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The Japanese government is denying that an online project to monitor “incorrect and inappropriate” information on Twitter and publish “correct” information is an attempt at online censorship.
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Social media is taking another turn in its diverse trends toward monitoring and culling intelligence in order to track down and counter military operations.

Read more at Socialtimes.com

Last week’s homework was to create a list of keywords to monitor on Twitter (don’t worry, you can catch up if you didn’t finish it last week). This week, your Twitter homework is to get down to monitoring those keywords so you can keep up with what’s going on in your niche.
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