If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been M.I.A. lately, you can thank Twitter for it. I love blogging. I love my online life and I appreciate the audience I have here on SheGeeks. However, sometimes real life interrupts. You sit at your computer all day, every day and then one day, you want to get up and go. Go somewhere, any where! You just want to get out of your house and interact with people right before your eyes. Unfortunately, you just can’t get this experience online.
However, you may encounter another problem when you have that itch to get up and go. You have no clue where to go. You don’t know what’s going on in your area and your friends may or may not be up for going out with you. Either way, you still want to get out of the house. What do you do? Well, you turn to the web and all these social media tools. Isn’t that what they’re here for?
Searching Twitter for Events
The problem with all of this is the same problem that plague mobile social networks. If there’s no one in your area, then you may have a hard time finding something to do using the web and social media. For all intents and purposes, we’ll assume you live in a major city. I currently reside in Atlanta and their are plenty of ATLiens on Twitter. Using the new Twitter Search (formally Summize), I’ve been able to find at least 5 events a week to consider attending. Here’s how I accomplish this:
Head to twitter search and use the advance search option. Here is where you can customize the results of what you are searching for. Scroll towards the bottom of the page and you’ll see an area name ‘Places’. Here is where you type in your current location. I’d recommend using a city instead of a zip code. If you’d like to change the “distance” of the search results from your location there’s also an option for that. Click the search button and Twitter will present you with all the latest tweets that match your search settings. These results are tweets from Twitter users and may at first seem like nothing. However, if you read through a couple of the tweets, you’re sure to see where everyone is heading tonight or what events are going on in your city.
In the above image, one person in Atlanta arrived at a voting poll at just the right time with no lines. I could easily send him a message and ask what poll is he located at so that I won’t have to wait in line either. At the same time another tweeter provided a link to find the nearest polling spot near me. I think I’ll be able to get out the house, go vote, and find something else to do before the end of the night with these search results.
Using Upcoming to Find Events in Your Area
When I’m in the mood to attend a conference or another event in my city, Upcoming is my second option. Upcoming is a property of Yahoo that caters to upcoming events in a lot of cities. It’s also a tool that I think a lot of promoters should start using. Here you can find events in a variety of categories. From music, to comedy, and even upcoming tech conferences, Upcoming has something for everyone. Simply type in your city and Upcoming with present you with events, locations, times, and descriptions. You can make it known that you’ll be attending and also see if any of your friends will be there too.
Another social media tool that I recommend is Brightkite. Any active of user of Brightkite can tell you that it is definitely a mobile social network to look out for. However, we’ll save that for another post. So what social media tools are you using to get out of your house and spend a night out on the town?
