I have noticed that there are two main methods being used to search Twitter. The first is a direct search for specific people, especially celebrities who have turned to the social networking site to keep in touch with fans and one another. The second is by taking advantage of the great live search options where you utilize the unique algorithm Twitter uses for their users.

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But many people don't know that there is another way you can search, and that is by searching by keywords in users' bios. Those are the paragraphs that users write about themselves in their profile pages. They can be a convenient way to find like minded individuals or Twitter accounts associated with other sites or groups.

Of course, while there are personal reasons to do this like building new friendships with others, there are great marketing capabilities associated. You can use these searches to find common trends, create statistic reports or focus a campaign. You can also use it to take a peek at the competition.

The best part is that you can find official representatives or employers of any company to make a pitch or request a quote.

Twitter Analytics. Foller.me is a Twitter analytics application that gives you rich insights about any public Twitter profile. We gather near real-time data about topics, mentions, hashtags, followers, location and more! @username First Lastname Location or hometown Bio information. This should be concise and to the point. These usually have no more than four lines of text. Link to a website date of joining Twitter birthdate change this to your own background image Followers background follower head shot Follower. To upload a profile photo you must be on the web or using an official application. Check your file type. Twitter supports JPEG, GIF, and PNG file formats. Profile photos with nudity will be removed. Check the size of your image. Maximum file size for profile photos is 2MB. Check the dimensions. Recommended dimensions for profile images are. How to unprotect your Tweets. To unprotect your Tweets, follow the above instructions: For web, uncheck the box next to Protect my Tweets.For the Twitter for iOS and Twitter for Android apps, uncheck the slider or box next to Protect your Tweets.; Be sure to review your pending follower requests before making your Tweets public.

First impressions count, and your profile is your chance to make a lasting, positive one. Each element of your profile should accurately reflect your brand’s purpose and values, and persuade a potential customer to follow you. We'll break down the four key parts of a Twitter profile, along with tips and suggestions for each field.

1. Twitter Search: Limited

The most straightforward way to search for people is to use the official search platform located here. Sadly (and weirdly) it is quite limited: all you can is to provide a search terms and scroll through results:

2. Google Search: High Proximity

Another cool tool we always use is Google. Here you can have lots of flexibility. Here's the search command to restrict the search to users' bios:

[site:twitter.com bio:*keyword -inurl:status]

(-inurl:status) filters out individual status updates

The only downside is that this way you'll get high-proximity results - meaning that, as a rule, [bio:] and [your keyword] will be very close on the page.

You can also filter out users that have the same keyword in a username:

[site:twitter.com bio:*keyword -inurl:status -intitle:google]

3. Twiangulate: 'Real People'

If you are sick of search tools bringing up more bots than people, you will love this app. Twiangulate works by filtering results based on a unique algorithm that separates fake profiles from the real and active ones. They call this 'meaningful searching', and it works beautifully.

They also have compare lists, biggest user sections and other tabs that can be helpful in your search. Unfortunately, it will search on various criteria, not just on bio. But that is one section it looks at and you only have to fill in what you want it to look for.

You can ignore the 'city' and 'username' sections.

Besides, it supports a few sweet boolean operators:

• Both words in the bio: hot & dog
• One of the words in the bio: hot | dog
• One word but not the other: hot !dog
• Exact match: 'hot dog'

4. LocaFollow: Combine Several Searches

The available search criteria options LocaFollow offers are expansive, and include location, keywords in bio, words used in user name, and recent tweets.

You can get a lot based on an entire sentence of keywords, for example by writing Seattle based freelance writers on technology. That can be a great way to network, find potential guest posters for a blog or set up interviews for upcoming projects.

Because you can combine any of that criteria you can focus it in ways that you can't with the other two tools. Because of that, it is my personal favorite way to target Twitter searches, especially based on bios.

Let's Recap!

Are you aware of any other fun tools to search Twitter users by keyword in the bio? Please let us know!

Also see:

Profile images

Profile images (also known as avatars) are an important component of a Twitter account’s expression of identity. Use POST account/update_profile_image to upload a profile image on behalf of a user.

Alternative image sizes for user profile images¶

Obtain a user’s most recent profile image, along with the other components comprising their identity on Twitter, from GET users/show. The user object contains the profile_image_url and profile_image_url_https fields. These fields will contain the resized “normal” variant of the user’s uploaded image. This “normal” variant is typically 48px by 48px.

Twitter Profile

By modifying the URL, it is possible to retrieve other variant sizings such as “bigger”, “mini”, and “original”. Consult the table below for more examples:

Default profile images¶

Some users may not have uploaded a profile image. Users who have not uploaded a profile image can be identified by the default_profile_image field of their user object having a true value.

The profile_image_url and profile_image_url_https URLs provided for users in this case will indicate Twitter’s default profile photo, which is https://abs.twimg.com/sticky/default_profile_images/default_profile_normal.png.

The table above can be used to determine how to retrieve different size variants of the default image.

Outdated profile images¶

If a 403 or 404 error is returned when trying to access a profile image, refresh the user object using GET users/show to retrieve the most recent profile_image_url or profile_image_url_https. The URL may have changed, which happens for instance when the user updates their profile image.

Profile banners¶

Profile banners allow users to further customize the expressiveness of their profiles. Use POST account/update_profile_banner to upload a profile banner on behalf of a user.

Profile banners come in a variety of display-enhanced sizes. The variant sizes are available through a request to GET users/profile_banner or by modifying the final path component of the profile_banner_url found in a user object according to the table below.

Twitter Profile Template

The profile banner data available at each size variant’s URL is in PNG format.

The following sizes are available:

Twitter Profile Pic

The following sizes are available for the certain screen types: