The PhoneBoy Blog

Finding Check Point Needles in the Twitter Haystack

15 May 2009

One of my “jobs” is to monitor for mentions of Check Point Software on Twitter. This is a lot harder than it seems, even with the ability to search with Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, or even the Twitter Search site. The problem: search terms. The ways I’ve seen people refer to the company include:

• CP (for Check Point)
• CHKP (the stock ticker)
• Check Point
• Check Point Software
• Checkpoint (people forget there’s a space between the two words)

They might also refer to a product, such as:

• VPN-1
• UTM-1
• Power-1
• SecuRemote
• Endpoint Security
• Endpoint Connect
• Pointsec
• ZoneAlarm

Since each search phrase can be no more than 140 characters, this gets out of hand pretty quickly, not to mention exposed a nice bug in Seesmic Desktop. I actually have to run three different columns in Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop to see what people are talking about.

Searching for Check Point by it’s name (with or without the space) is difficult, because in addition to the company, there is:

• Security Checkpoints (e.g. at the airport)
• Racing Checkpoints (e.g. when doing a rally race)
• DUI/DWI/OVI Checkpoints (as in driving under the influence, driving while intoxicated, operating vehicle under the influence, depending on the locale)
• Coding/Debugging Checkpoints
• Other companies named Checkpoint (they do exist, in other fields)

Not to mention the fact that my search for Power-1 picks up POWER!!!!1 and little things like that. In short, there’s a fair bit of sifting that goes on in order to find the tweets that require a response. That won’t stop me from trying, but if you can suggest anything to improve the situation, let me know!