#CCLiveChat on Twitter with Joe & I starting Feb 2011.
What? Live Chat on Twitter! This means that Joe and I will be behind their computers for a live chat on Twitter!
Really? Yes, between noon-1pm EST you can join our live chat to discuss unsolved homicides (and more) and brainstorm with others participating in the live chat.
When? Fridays
What time? Noon-1pm EST
When is the first live chat? February 25, 2011, noon – 1 pm EST.
Who can take part? Cops, cold case bloggers, Chief Medical Examiners, crime journalists, lawyers, law students, criminal justice students, clerks, and anyone else who is interested in finding justice for the victims of unsolved homicides.
What topics do you discuss? We start with a mixture of unsolved homicides, unidentified people, missing persons, and each live chat will end with a “Help the Cops!” section in which the cops get to highlight where they need help (e.g. wanted people, donations, volunteer opportunities, traffic issues, anything!). If we notice that we have to cramp too much in one hour we will change the live chat format to a weekly rotation of the above mentioned subjects.
Note: anyone can take part and brainstorm with us. Anyone can ask the cops questions but keep it nice and polite! Remember that Joe and I watch the discussion.
How do you take part? You will need a Twitter account but that is free! Don’t know how to get a Twitter account? Scroll all the way down for instructions.
How do I follow the live chat? In Twitter, go to Joe’s Twitter account @coldcasesquad or to my account @Vidocq_CC. Check which one of our latest tweets ends with #CClivechat (scroll down for more on this). Click on the hash tagged word #CClivechat. You will now see all the tweets about this topic in real time. Look at the right: there is a green button that says “save this search and search for users,” click and go! You are in! If you scroll down in the right margin, you can also click the RSS button to get an RSS feed for this query.
Note: if you only click on #livechat you did not specify which live chat you wish to see so you might end up in another discussion. Ours is #CClivechat with the “CC” of course for Cold Cases.
If you use Tweetdeck and you click on a hash tagged word, Tweetdeck automatically opens a new column with all those tweets! This makes catching up easy and you have an overview in a separate column. This beats scrolling down on Twitter’s own website!
How do you get Tweetdeck? Go to and download it. Tweetdeck runs smoothly on Adobe. Remember to check the box in the lower right hand corner in Tweetdeck. If Twitter is down, Tweetdeck cannot download your tweets so; check to see whether it states anything about Twitter’s API.
How do I take part in the live chat on Twitter? Use in every tweet: #CClivechat. Twitter uses hash tags a.k.a. the number sign (Shift F3) to make following a discussion on the same topic easy. If you are talking with friends about coffee brands and would like others to join in, start using the hash tag (#) and add “coffee” so it will look like this: #coffee.
To take part in our discussion you must use our hash tag #CClivechat. Why? Because there are many live chats so if you want to be in ours, use #CClivechat. If you take part but leave out the hash tags, the others who search for participants by hash tag may not be able to find you.
If you just logged in and joined our live chat, say hello in your first hash tagged tweet so we can alert others to a new live chatter!
Ready? Go to Twitter and set up your account!
When did you say is the first live chat on cold cases? February 25, 2011 from noon – 1 pm EST.
See you then!
P.S.:
How do you set up a Twitter account? Go to Twitter’s website at
On the right, you see the Twitter bird and where to sign up, click there.
The next page says “Join the Conversation.” Fill in your name. This name will be visible in your profile. More on profiles later! Select a username, the name that will be part of the URL, which people will follow. So, if you choose “happy cop” your username will look like this: @happycop.
Now set up a password. Do not take this lightly! There are many robots and hackers and they love to get into your Twitter account. If you use Twitter for a while, you will start to see weird DMs from people that you follow. A DM is a direct message from one user to another. If you receive a DM with a message that you are sure was not sent by the account holder, do not click on any links included in that DM. Delete, change your password, and immediately contact the account holder by public tweet, and tell them you received a weird DM. This way, others are alerted as well to the fact that hackers are busy on Twitter again.
Next, your email address. People can find you on Twitter either by searching on account names or email addresses. If you do not like to use your work email and wish to be on the safe side, open a free Gmail, hotmail, or Yahoo account that you exclusively use for Twitter.
Terms Of Service (TOS) must be accepted to create an account. Privacy is limited (but that is to be expected) and yes, Twitter reserves the right to use your tweets elsewhere.
Ok, save and let’s set up the account!
Now look at the top of the page. It should say: home-profile-find people-settings-help-sign out. All these are pretty self-explanatory except for settings. Click on settings, you should see at the top: account-password-mobile-notices-profile-design-connections.
Let’s go over each one:
Account: you see your name, your username, and your email. You can choose your language, time zone, click tweet media (I did check this box to prevent me from seeing other people’s ugh-materials and yes, some souls post that in tweets about a different topic!), and last, tweet privacy. If you check that box, it means that everyone who wishes to follow you must ask your permission to do so and you must approve each person. This means that you will get less followers, people will be less likely to retweet (RT) your tweets (in other words, repeat what you said in a tweet so their followers can read it as well), and your tweets will not be publicly available. If you are tweeting for your police department, you want as many people as possible to see your calls for help and requests for information so making your Twitter account private will limit you.
Next, your password. Choose wisely and be ready to change it often!
Next is mobile. You can use Twitter on a computer but also on your cell phone. Remember your minute plan and your service provider’s rates do apply! I do not use this feature. I have a Blackberry and Blackberry has its own application for Twitter. Free! There are many more available like UberTwitter, Hootsuit, etc. Just Google them.
Notices: I have none of those options checked since it clogs up my email inbox especially when you get a lot of followers!
On to profile: add a picture and please do add something! First impressions count here and those who leave this blank get a standard egg avatar (check that later in your stream). Also, fill in your name (or nickname) so people can find you if they search for you on Twitter.
Location: if you don’t mind people to know where exactly you live, fill it in. Some have latitudes, some have a humorous phrase here, and some have their real location listed.
Web: if you have a website, put the URL there. If you are a cop, place your police department’s website link there. Others have the link to their blog there or a link to an online resume.
Now comes the most important part: your bio! Do not leave this blank! People on Twitter do read the bios before clicking “follow” so you have to make sure that people want to follow you. Add your job, interest, specialties, hobbies, etc., and tweak it often once you get the hang of Twitter. Now save everything!
Next is the design: choose a background from Twitter or, scroll down and click on “change background image” so you can browse pictures on your computer to use as your background. You can change the colours in the right margin by using “change design colors.” Experiment with that later.
Last: connections. It is crucial to check this weekly to see which third party applications have access to your account! I just mentioned that I use a Blackberry application for Twitter. That means that it only works if I give Blackberry permission to use my Twitter account, to download my tweets, so I can see them on my handheld, right? There are many applications people use. Applications to check for new followers and to see who stops following you, applications to immediately post new blog posts on your Twitter account (feeds), Face Book connections, and more! Depending on how much you trust these third party applications, you can have as many as you want. However, make sure that you check them often, revoke access if you do not recognize them, and just start over.
Now go to your home page. You should see your chosen background, in the right column your profile, and below that:
@yourname: click and you see discussions directed to or mentioning you
DM: click and you see direct messages exclusively for you
Favorites: click and you see tweets you love and you checked the box in that tweet. You can use it as a search tool if you want to highlight all the tweets from a specific cold case live chat!
Retweets: click and you see tweets repeated (retweeted) by you, by others, etc. These RTs can be written by you or by others.
Below that is a search box and below that a possibility to make lists to place account holders with similar interests on one list. Below that is “trending” (everything that is popular on Twitter) and there you will see topics with and without hash tags. Below that is the RSS feed.
Hope this helps!