Twitter was launched in 2006 and functions differently than social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows users to post “tweets.” Tweets are text-based posts of up to 280 characters that are displayed on the website and delivered to “followers.”
The interface for Twitter is remarkably simple. There is a search feature where you can find individuals by their name or e-mail address. Upon finding the user, you simply click their name to view all of their tweets. Users have the option of restricting access to their Twitter pages and can limit who is permitted to follow them. However, due to the simple nature of the site, it appears that most users allow public access to their profiles. Twitter’s main focus is “news”; thus, it is extremely popular with news agencies and celebrities.
Another valuable resource is to use Google or other search engines to locate electronic evidence of the subject. Using Advanced Search Operators within Google will allow you to narrow your search results and quickly locate this evidence. An example of an Advanced Search may be of the subject’s phone number across multiple sites (ex. 555-555-5555 site:craigslist.com). This type of search will return results if the subject has listings posted on Craigslist. You can replace the URL in the site operator with other websites, such as Twitter.com, to locate the subject’s twitter account.
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