Tweet Clouds & Ethics
I stumbled upon (as in came across, not actually Stumbled Upon) a blog post about Tweet Clouds, a service that provides a tag cloud of your tweets. This is pretty interesting for personal use, but what are the other ramifications? Eric Gonzalez asks these questions:
Will Twittercloud analysis become as common an HR proceedure as a background check for hiring? Will nerds like me run social media metrics prior to doing business with someone? Is this an effective (or ethical) way to get inside a prospect’s head for salespeople? What are the shortcomings and caveats here?
How would you use cloud statistics in business, or in your personal life?
I must say, I find these to be incredibly intriguing questions. I will say that on first blush, I don’t have any ethical problems with using a Tweet Cloud to better understand a prospective client. When people openly publish information on the Internet, I think they have to expect that information to be used to market to them, but I am curious what you all think about that. Is there something I’m missing?
Unfortunately, Tweet Clouds is down right now, so I can’t actually produce a cloud for you all to see. Perhaps I’ll update this later. It’s not my night for web services.
Update: It helps when you title your posts 
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Glad to have you join the conversation! What i find most fascinating is how a Facebook search is basically standard HR hiring practice now in silicon valley. Nobody would have called that even 2 years ago. Twitter searches aren’t too far behind, I’d wager.