Andrew Hyde (@andrewhyde) of Startup Weekend and Techstars shows how to customize Filtrs to monitor individual Twitter accounts for specific topics. Check out the video.

Note: A Filtrbox G2 account is required for this hack. If you have a Basic account and want more power and more control, drop us a line and try G2 for 14 days for free!

Filtrbox now supports real-time alerts for all of our content sources. This means you can set up alerts for Twitter (as well as the millions of other sources we monitor). The system will send you an email alert as soon as a new mention is found. There are a ton of useful applications for this feature, but here are a few essentials.

• Company monitor - set up an alert for any mentions of your company on Twitter. Even when you are not being spoken to with an @reply, you still see the mention.
• Vanity Search - set up two Filtrs for this one, one for your name (use quotes!) and one for your twitterID. The problem with desktop tools or Twitter search is that they are only working for you when you are running them and interacting with them. With Filtrbox it’s set it and forget it. What I love about this is that even when I’m running around to meetings, the alerts are in my inbox and I don’t have to waste time in multiple apps looking for the mentions.
• Lead Generation - search for a phrase or a hashtag that relates to your business. Monitor the conversations in real-time and tweet back when folks are looking for solutions.

Please note that a Filtrbox G2 (paid subscription) is required to access this feature. If you have a Free account and want to upgrade, please get in touch with us.

Instructions

1. Log into your G2 account
2. Create a new Filtr, or use an existing one
3. Enter your search term in the “find articles about” box. If its a new Filtr hit save!
4. Check the “enable realtime alerts” box

5. Tune the Filtr’s sources and minimum rank. If you just want alerts for Twitter, uncheck the Mainstream and Blog options. You can also uncheck the “include in daily briefing” if you don’t want the results coming each morning in addition to the real-time alerts. Save the settings.

Click on the thumbnail to see our own company monitor:

If you have any questions on the setup let us know by leaving a comment or question here.

We are pleased to announce a new webinar series - “Getting the most out of Filtrbox G2″. Join us for our first webinar this Thursday at 11:00 AM MDT. Patrick Cameron of Filtrbox will run you through best practices, tips and tricks for fine-tuning your account and dialing in your Filtrs for maximum performance. It doesn’t matter if you already have an account, or are just curious to see Filtrbox in action we guarantee you’ll learn something new!

Follow this link to register. http://tinyurl.com/c2oqgp Space is limited so sign up soon! We’ll be posting a full Webinar calendar shortly as well.

We often get asked how Filtrbox is different from traditional RSS readers and aggregators. Here is a quick review of the major differences:

Content Discovery

When using traditional RSS aggregators, the user supplies the list of RSS feeds. This means that the domain of information gathered by a traditional RSS reader/aggregator is limited to the RSS feeds (content sources) that are known to the user. However, given today’s information environment there are thousands of new content sources are being created on a daily basis. Anyone can potentially become a publisher, and it is unrealistic to put the burden on the user to keep up with the thousands of new content sources that are sprouting up each day. Filtrbox takes this burden off of the user’s shoulders and discovers the new content sources automatically. Filtrbox’s search domain covers broad content sources INCLUDING new content sources a user is not aware of.

Additionally, Filtrbox has a provision for the users to add their own RSS feeds of interest to be searched.

Publisher centric vs. content centric

Traditional RSS readers/aggregators present to the user all the content that is published by a specific publisher regardless of whether the user is interested in the content or not. Thus, the traditional RSS readers/aggregators implement a publisher centric consumption model. On the other hand, Filtrbox implements a content centric model. Rather than deliver to the user all the content published by a specific publisher, whether its relevant or not, Filtrbox allows the user to filter for the content that they are interested in from ANY publisher by providing contextual filtrs. The content centric model implemented by Filtrbox greatly reduces information overload because each piece of content is examined and filtered for contextual relevance before it is delivered to the user.

No filtering vs. contextual relevance filtering

As indicated above, most traditional RSS aggregators do not filter the content. All content published by a limited list of publishers is delivered to the user regardless of whether it is relevant or not. Filtrbox provides the user with the ability to better tune the filtering system for contextual relevence.

Relevance Ranking

Traditional RSS readers/aggregators do little to solve the problem of information overload. Filtrbox users have the ability to say “I know there is a lot of information out there, just show me the important stuff”. Filtrbox is able to show “the important stuff” because it ranks articles based on their relevance and importance to the user using proprietary scoring algorithm called called FiltrRank™. Articles with a high FiltrRank™ score indicate articles of the highest importance.

Search feeds on steroids

Some search sites or RSS readers allow you to consume feeds for search results. Filtrbox provides custom feeds (known as FiltrFeeds) that can be added to any reader or aggregator. FiltrFeeds also leverage FiltrRank™ and automatically aggregate the results from the millions of sources Filtrbox covers. This means you get the benefit of contextual scoring, noise control, and automatic aggregation.

Beyond RSS

Unlike traditional RSS readers, aggregators, and content roll-up sites, Filtrbox consumes content delivery formats beyond RSS. Filtrbox is capable of consuming both standard and proprietary content delivery formats.

Not really a reader

Filtrbox is not trying to be a replacement RSS reader or feed aggregator. The service discovers content from millions of sources and delivers it to you via email, RSS or the rich web dashboard. There are some basic article viewing features that are shared with email clients and news readers like mark-as-read, delete article, flagging and feedback, but thats about where the similarities end.

One of the most exciting things about working at Filtrbox is hearing new ways people are using our persistent search technology to make them more productive in their daily lives.  We often hear of people using Filtrbox to track their brand or keep an eye on competitors and sales prospects but we also hear about people tracking medical issues or looking for new fitness workouts or gaming tips. In fact the list seems virtually endless!  Below are a few or our favorites that we’ve come across recently.  Feel free to use them for inspiration and by all means keep filtring and sharing your experiences with us. Drop us a line and let us know what YOU Filtr!
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Filtrbox is the best application I have ever used to watch the trends. I do not use it for business purposes but am following the discussions around the net on three issues: Deleuze, as my favorite philosopher, and Khatami (the former President of Iran, sometimes I forward the findings to his advisors), and “dialogue among cultures and civilizations”.
I do not check my account at filtrbox.com often, as it is filtered by some ISPs here in Tehran; I check it for certain tweaking in the keywords when I find access. The daily email briefings are marvelous as they lead me to fresh information as well as new connections.
I use google analytics but Filtrbox is more powerful.
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I work in the public relations department for HomeAway, Inc. the largest vacation
rental marketplace that currently has 11 sites in all. Given the number of
sites and the unique key words associated with each such as  HomeAway.com, VRBO.com
and VacationRentals.com - it is important that we have a tool to monitor everything said with each site.
With the ever-expanding media landscape – Filtrbox helps us
identify moves by competitors, comments by users and praise by
customers. Typically, I am fully aware of the news that comes from
traditional media (dailies, magazines and broadcast) — however, social
media is when it becomes hard to predict when and what gets said - this is why I use Filtrbox.
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I have been using Filtrbox to find information on employers I was applying to, as well as for the less serious/more fun use of trying to find information on Blu-Ray releases of more obscure/art films I am a fan of.
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I use Filtrbox to stay on top of news for work and for personal growth.
Mainly around the topics of Deliverability for email (Work), Forex
Trading (personal), Venture Capital News (both personal and work).  The
daily emails that I receive really help me scan through and grab the
information that I find interesting for the day.  Keep up the good work.
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Great tool! One of those ideas that are obvious and implemented, but not well. I filter for just a few terms, mainly related to the python programming language.
The signal to noise ratio is quite good. I have found many posts that I would not have easily found, and many that I would not have thought of searching for. I have developed several business relationships from articles found from filtrbox.
Keep up the good work!
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I use Filtrbox to track two websites I work on. I’ve found it more useful and reliable than Google alerts
which sometimes sends me alerts for links that are months old!
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I’m a PR guy, so I’m trying to keep an eye on what the Internet is saying
about my clients. The difference with Filtrbox is Twitter conversations. Not
even Twitter’s own search features pull in as much as Filtrbox does. Also,
Filtrbox seems to pull info from places Google Alerts can’t find. I like it.

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We are a start-up in the PaaS (Platform as a Service) field.  Though a much hyped technology right now, being a part of the cloud computing bandwagon, it is still fairly new and often, the target of scathing put-downs that go with the praises.  We use Filtrbox to monitor our company brand through keywords.  With it, we can listen to the conversations surrounding it and if possible, be able to allay such fears to drive trial deployments and eventually, adoption and do away with the ‘hard sell’ as much as possible.
Like most start-ups, non-techies like me have to wear a bunch of hats and one hat requires that I do the part of social media for our company.  This involves listening, listening and listening as well as timely responses to issues raised about us and even for the industry in general.  With Filtrbox, you reduce the time to go through online researches and it’s like having another staff present taking care of such a big task without the accompanying cost. [Not that we're cheap, just saving resources.  Already asked for budget to get a Filtrbox paid account.  Hopefully, soon!]

In the past few weeks we’ve added two features to enhance our support of Twitter monitoring within Filtrbox.

1. Tweet This - From within the dashboard, you can now tweet any article in your account. Just mouse over an article and you’ll see the new “tweet this” link on the action bar. This is a super-easy way to share articles found in Filtrbox with the Twitter community. All you need is a twitter account, and as long as you are logged into Twitter in your browser it will work seamlessly.




2. Twitter links in your Daily Briefing - The ability to monitor conversations on Twitter in Filtrbox isn’t new, but the Daily Briefing emails have now been updated to show you who posted the tweet. Its also a live link so you can visit that person’s twitter page very easily. Here’s what it looks like in your daily briefing email.

Let us know what you think!

You asked, and we listened! Log into your dashboard and check out the new features we have just released. Many of these enhancements are the result of direct customer feedback, and we addressed a number of issues that have been nagging us too. If you haven’t logged into your dashboard in awhile, take a few minutes and refine your Filtrs or add a new one and give the new version a test-drive. Details on the enhancements follow;

• Improved Filtrs and live search
• Better charting
• Mark-as-Read support
• Delete article support
• Block source
• OPML file import
• Action bar

Improved Filtrs and live search
The way that Filtrbox runs its searches has been improved to provide more accurate and comprehensive results. You may notice some changes in the articles the system finds for your Filtrs. In almost all cases this should be an improvement, in the case of very general filtrs you may now want to refine them further to get more relevant results.

In order to provide better instant-feedback and a more consistent experience, Filtrbox now runs live searches for your Filtrs as you set them up and provides sample results from a broader range of sources. Click and drag include or exclude terms from the tag cloud or add additional terms yourself and click search to get realtime feedback reflected in new sample articles. Check out this quick screencast to see it in action.



Better Charting
This release introduces a new charting component that looks a bit different, performs better, and will offer more flexibility as we expand the display options. What’s new is the date box and calendar pop-up to control the date ranges, and the “show for the past days” box where you can just type in how many days of data you want. Much easier to use than the sliders that were there before.

Mark-as-Read
After you have clicked on an article in the Filtrbox dashboard, the title of the article goes from bold to regular text. You can mark an article as un-read also if needed.



Delete article
There are cases where you might want to remove an article from your account. Perhaps the article is not relevant to your Filtrs, or it’s a splog that slipped through our defense systems. If you are in PR or web marketing and you are using FiltrFeeds, you can also use this feature to cleanse an article out of a feed that is getting published or shared. Once articles are deleted, they are removed from your account and cannot be recovered. There is no “un-delete” - once its gone its gone!

Block source
Here’s another very handy feature that helps remove articles and content you simply don’t want to see going forward. Perhaps you consistently see articles from a domain you don’t care for, or is of little value to you. Just click “block source” and the domain gets added to your personal blacklist.



You can even modify or remove the blocked domains. Filtrbox looks at the FQDN, not just the domain. This means you can block “notagoodblog.wordpress.com” without blocking the entire domain. If you wanted to block all of wordpress.com, you can add this to the blocked domains list manually. You can also modify a blocked domain or remove previously blocked domains. This is done on the Account/Manage Content Sources tab.




OPML file import
Filtrbox already persistently searches millions of blogs, thousands of mainstream sources, and social networks such as Twitter and FriendFeed, but if you want to ensure the system monitors specific feeds you care about, you can add them to your account. Filtrbox now supports OPML file import to make it easy to add a large number of feeds at once. This can be found on the Account/Manage Content Sources tab also.



Action bar
We cleaned up the dashboard a bit by moving a number of functions to an “action bar” that appears as you mouse over each article. From this bar, you can provide feedback, share the article, delete, or block the article’s source.

In addition to these features there are a number of “under the hood” improvements you shouldn’t see, but from which you will benefit. We hope you like these enhancements, and are hoping to hear from you on what else you’d like to see to help you get even more value from Filtrbox! Just leave us a comment on the blog, or drop us a line at support [at] filtrbox.com.

Hooked on your Filtrbox daily briefing?  Here are three tips to keep them flowing.

1) Always have articles.  If you have very specific search terms, is it possible there will be no new articles in your account.   If that is the case, we will not send you a blank email (remember - it’s all about more knowledge, less noise).

2) Monitor your FiltrRank threshold to make sure you get the right number of articles.  For your daily briefing you set a FiltrRank threshold and we send only articles that meet or exceed that threshold.  For example if your FiltrRank is set to 9 you will only get articles that score 9 or 10.  You adjust this threshold by going to the Accounts tab (top of page) and “Notify and FiltrFeed”  (center of page).  Don’t forget to click save after any adjustments.

3) Tell your spam filter hands off.  Occasionally we will get caught in an overzealous spam filter.  Adding noreply@filtrbox.com to your address book and asking your IT team to add it to your email white list should solve this problem.

If you are still having issues, give us a shout at support@filtrbox.com.

Just created a killer Filtr but not seeing any results?  What gives?  Below are a few suggestions to help you get your result set dialed in.

1) Adjust the Date and FiltrRank sliders

The two sliders at the top of the article pane are designed to help you restrict your view and see just the relevant information.  They work great and any changes are shown immediately but be careful because being too restrictive can leave you with no articles in your view.

2) Select or de-select sources to help control the noise.  The more sources you selected the more articles we will find.  Twitter and Friendfeed can be controlled at either the global or filtr level.  They can both be a bit noisy so include them at your discretion. Sources can be de-selected by clicking on each radio button to uncheck.

3) Selecting Filtrs - Make sure you have only the filtr topics you wish to view enabled by selecting their radio buttons.  In this example I will see only the articles for Red Sox, Mac and money.

4) In the case of too few articles, you may have overly restrictive search terms.  Remember the system is designed to persistently search for the key word or words in your filtr.  In the example below I will only see articles that include all 5 terms biology, marine, whales, dolphins and plankton.  To be more general you could replace the ANDs with ORs in which case you would get articles that have (biology and marine) or (biology and whales) or (biology and dolphins) or (biology and plankton).

5)  Filtrbox is still searching for new articles.  Unlike web search engines Filtrbox performs persistent search.  This means that Filtrbox will continually search for articles that contain your Filtr until you modify or delete it.  Our searches may take a little time to search the far ends of the internet and start bringing results back to you.

If you have tried these adjustments and you are still not seeing the results you think you should, give us a shout at support@filtrbox.com.