Are PMs Really Using Twitter to Research Tenants?

Anyone know about this?
The terrors of Twittering: growing up in an unexploded data minefield
Party antics and extreme behaviour posted for fun now on Facebook and other social networking sites are set to become ghosts that haunt individuals when they try to get credit, homes or jobs as adults.

That's because lenders, employers and landlords are increasingly using complex data mining tools to capture all the publically posted data we supply to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and any other social media network or blog to build data-rich profiles of our privates lives, say internet privacy experts.
 
I sent article this to my daughter who recentluy got "sacked" by a large hardware chain for her photos on Facebook...it really does come back to bite you.

Yes, PMs should definitely use this technology. BTW, to my tenants, thanks for paying my rent late again this month guys :)
 
Ah, Gen Y internet type time waster hey. In my time we would just ride our bikes to each others' houses and hang out dribbling crap or playing handball. Mobile phones weren't invented then either...

Cheers,
Michael
 
I've used Facebook to check tenants. Wish I'd thought of using it earlier than I did.

I have a friend who works in recruiting & another's role is recruiting staff & both use Facebook & Twitter for checking out prospective staff. It definitely influences their decisions.
 
I Facebook'ed my tenant out of curiosity (after he was already in the house). Not much there to see, but it's amazing what some people will expose to the world. I think it can be a great resource for checking people.
 
My son checked out one of our young tenants, and one of interests was "I like sex". It amazes me that he would not think this through. Who knows who is looking at these pages :eek:

(I am not shocked by his statement, but amazed at his lack of forward thinking.)

I don't want to see what is on my sons' pages :eek:.
 
We used Facebook and google to check potential tenants for our rental property - some people sounded really nice on the phone but once we 'facebooked' them they were taken off our list of potentials.

Of course, we also ended up using the good old telephone to do reference checks. I

We've made sure our privacy settings are set to high so potential tenants can't 'facebook' us!
 
It's another social networking site. I don't use it. Damn waste of time if you ask me.

Ah, Gen Y internet type time waster hey.

Two classic examples of "you don't know what you don't know".

Twitter is a tool that can be used by Gen Y (and younger) to "tweet" about asinine topics such as brushing their teeth, what's on TV and links to photos of cats that can haz cheezeburgerz.

It's also a tool that can be very useful if you dig under the surface just a little.

You use Twitter to "follow" people, meaning, when they update their status (aka "tweet"), you get their updated on your Twitter home page.

Now, the idea is to not follow annoying 14 year olds, but to follow mortgage brokers, accountants and people of interest - whoever takes your fancy.

For example, I follow a number of mortgage brokers, news providers and property commentators on Twitter, and get all sorts of useful information delivered in one place, including reports about property stats, interest rates provided by banks, mortgage product changes and, of course, opinions.

You can also do real time searches of topics that people are discussing right now.

Enjoy!

-- MJ.
 
It's another social networking site. I don't use it. Damn waste of time if you ask me.

Twitter = mindless banter by a load of Twits. :D

Twitter is a tool that can be used by Gen Y (and younger) to "tweet" about asinine topics such as brushing their teeth, what's on TV and links to photos of cats that can haz cheezeburgerz.
Hence the post above. :D
I follow a number of mortgage brokers, news providers and property commentators on Twitter, and get all sorts of useful information delivered in one place, including reports about property stats, interest rates provided by banks, mortgage product changes and, of course, opinions.

You can also do real time searches of topics that people are discussing right now.
.

I was actually aware that you can use it as a tool too, but there is just so much "noise" out there already, anything I want to know about is just a "Google" away, anyway.
 
Hence the post above. :D

I was actually aware that you can use it as a tool too, but there is just so much "noise" out there already, anything I want to know about is just a "Google" away, anyway.

Twitter is more up to date than Google. It depends on how "fresh", or "0 day" you want the information you're looking for. :D
 
Twitter is more up to date than Google. It depends on how "fresh", or "0 day" you want the information you're looking for. :D

That's OK. I don't care. I find SS is more up to date than Google half the time. :D

I've got Facebook. More mindless drivel most of the time. I rarely log on. Yes, I know it has it's use too, but I don't really care.
 
I'm a baby boomer. And I use and enjoy Twitter. Also use Facebook.

They are tools which can be used. I've found them effective in finding out things about my customers- actual and potential. And engaging them and learning about their requirements. While (hopefully) entertaining people with the (almost) daily signboards- I hope that I'm providing some pleasure to others.

My first experience of social media was Googling my store name- and getting a hit at the top of the list from a manager- "I hate my job an I hate my boss".
 
I signed up to facebook recently. An annoyingly large percentage of my friends list is related to me or my partner. Anything I post there goes through my cousins to my uncle to my grandmother to my parents. So, its very clean :)

Look too hard in Google on my alias(es) and you'll find I'm a member of sex tech sites, D&D type sites, a couple of property/renovation sites and various random webmaster style sites. All the *really* juicy stuff simply isn't on the internet - its not safe there. Not sure what *is* there is enough to put off a prospective landlord though, I'm comparatively quite boring. And you'd be pushing to find *anything* interesting on my partner ...

However, the day my daughter realises social networking exists, any privacy I have is long gone ...
 
Geoff! Who would hate you? You seem so nice...

Anyway I definately check people out on facebook. I find their 'favourite pages' or whatever they are a big giveaway. Also their friends and the little comments that come up as you scroll down the list. Sure, it's not a perfect way but if they have 50 friends that are all in a gang that looks dubious and they have the gang tattoo on their forehead in the picture then it's safe to make some conclusions from that. And that's even without trying to be their 'friend'. It's all very revealling.

Twitter? Nah, not for this little black duck... yawn-a-rama
 
Gee thanks CD.

One point. If, as an employer, I ever checked on any website (other than applications I received through Seek I guess) to check a potential employee I could be held in breech of the privacy act (as I understand).

It may be difficult for anybody to determine if I did access a website. Not impossible.

More difficult to determine if I used that information to influence my choice of an employee.

But not impossible.

So I will never search a potential employee's name.

Except to determine if that employee has applied for a job with me before.
 
I use Google and Facebook to check out potential tenants - note both of these are to look for negatives, they are used to eliminate potentials rather than to improve their applications.
How would I use Twitter to screen tenants? Would I have to establish an account? Would potential tenants actually have accounts under their own names that I could search, or will they have crazy aliases?
 
I don't use twitter much but it seems to have a healthy dose of crazy aliases. Depending on the person though its not hard to link crazy aliases to real names (I always get amused when older, fat, ugly people have nicknames like hotstud69 or prettybutterflyb*tch).

I spent yesterday morning researching a 'person of interest' online, as I sometimes have cause to do. The results were most enlightening ... didn't find him on Facebook though. Some bloke in the right age group in the same location though, but no indication he was the person I was looking for.
 
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