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What is TipTop?

TipTopSM is a near-time social search tool helping people quickly find interesting and useful answers to their questions from a variety of sources, enabling people to connect & share with those of similar interests, and providing sentiment analysis to help people gain from others' insights and experiences the world over. It is based on the idea that people should have a simple way to share their everyday experiences with others who are interested in learning from them without searching the entire Internet.

A question that is at the top of someone's mind can often be solved satisfactorily with a good set of tips shared by others. TipTop's vision is for you to discover useful and relevant Tips for your Tops every time you visit, and that you have fun exploring our site and sharing results with others -- in short, we hope the experience leaves you feeling tip top!

How is TipTop Search different? Why can’t I just use Google?

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Most search engines, including Google, crawl the Web looking for any text that matches your search terms. But TipTopSM goes one step further, it figures out what is currently being said about your search terms and delivers results making it easier to find what you need. What’s the difference?

  • Well, with Google, you have to deal with the misdirected, unhelpful results that happen to match the text you searched – with TipTopSM, you don’t have to spend time clicking and reading through all those web pages that may or may not have an answer to your question.
  • Also, because TipTopSM derives results from current conversations in social media & across the Web, it is more useful for finding out timely information on everyday issues that may not have a lot of useful matches in Google. TipTopSM isn’t a replacement for other search engines – it’s another concept entirely! TipTopSM is meant to help people connect with other people to exchange ideas and experiences, rather than only find out factual information.

Read more from our blog post, "The TipTop Perspective on the Future of Search from CEO Shyam Kapur". (Posted 03/18/2010)

Does TipTop only search Twitter?

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The real-time quality of the information on Twitter that TipTopSM filters make it part of a growing trend in online search that prizes unedited content generated by all kinds of people. On Twitter, millions of users share their experiences and thoughts every day. The problem is that there are so many messages and users, that finding relevant quality information and people related to your interests is really difficult.

  • Although Twitter does provide a portion of TipTopSM's results, "Tips" are also extracted from web pages, news articles, product reviews, ecommerce sites, online media, etc. The overall vision for this semantic technology is to facilitate contextually relevant, fast searches which also serve to connect people in a timely manner. TipTopSM's search results create the best place to connect with people, discover positive & negative "Tips", and use these individual and collective experiences to improve and enrich their own life and others.

Do I need a Twitter ID and account to use TipTop Search?

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Nope. TipTopSM does get information from Twitter, but you don’t have to have a Twitter account to see what other users are saying. However, you do need to be signed into a Twitter account to use some of TipTopSM’s communication features like sharing information with Twitter followers and replying to other Twitter user's messages.

Read more from our blog, "Experience the best of TipTop Search with Twitter". (Posted 11/12/2009)

How does TipTop search work?

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For any given search term you enter, TipTopSM's unique software searches multiple content sources and reads what is being said about the query. It pulls out the most interesting, useful and unique Tips that match the search term, and separates them from the less useful messages, including spam content.

  • This directs you to tons of fascinating information about topics that interest you & people that are currently interested in these topics. It saves you the hassle of having to browse through pages of spam and other junk to quickly find the stuff you need.
  • TipTopSM's unique search results page offers a few ways to look at the results for every query: Get Tips by Timeline, Discover Tips by Topic, and See Latest Tips & Tips by Sentiment (positive, negative & neutral messages). Click Search Results Help for a detailed explanation of the main features on TipTopSM's results page.

What is "Get Tips by Timeline" section?

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TipTopSM’s semantic technology is applied to and captured on every search result page, so users can see the big picture. In this section, the trend chart displays the search term's popularity, positive sentiment, negative sentiment & neutral statements over a given period of time. Using the slider below the chart you can see results back and forth in time. See Search Results Help for a more visual explanation.

Read more about TipTopSM’s "big picture" sentiment analysis from our blog, "TipTop's Presidential Ratings, Social Sentiment & Financial Indicators". (Posted 03/03/2010)

What is "Discover Tips by Topic" section?

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With "Tips by Topic", you can see the current concepts being discussed in social media at the moment. Clicking these topics will add the term to your existing query and update the search results. Click the icons in the "Discover Tips by Topic" title bar to either Share the Topic Cloud or Embed a Topic Cloud widget on a web page. See Search Results Help for a more visual explanation.

What are the differences between "Latest Tips", "Positive Tips",
"Negative Tips" & "Neutral Tips"?

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Tips can be timely, tips can be jolly, tips can be disappointing & tips can be informative in a variety of ways. To help people quickly find what they seek & help inform decisions, TipTopSM groups informative snippets into a variety of buckets:

  • The most recent tweets from Twitter appear in the "See Latest Tips" section. These messages can be positive, negative or neutral in nature.
  • Messages or informative snippets which contain overall positive sentiments are placed under "Positive Tips".
  • Messages or informative snippets which contain overall negative sentiments are placed under "Negative Tips".
  • Messages or snippets deemed less useful are placed in "Neutral Tips", and may include polls, advertisements and plain facts.

    • I found a positive message in the "Negative Tips" column.
    Why did this happen?

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    We are constantly improving TipTopSM’s semantic reading capabilities, which are far from perfect. If you find a message that you think is miscategorized, please let us know by using the Feedback form, so we can improve our results for you. .

    What kinds of things am I supposed to search for?

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    Anything, literally! If something is on your mind, chances are it’s on many other people’s minds, and those other people will have something interesting to say about it. A few ideas to get you started:
  • Search for a new book you’re curious to learn more about and see if people's overall impression was good or bad.
  • Enter the name of a dish or ingredient along with "recipe" to see what people are cooking up today.
  • Enter “crowded Metro” to see if anyone on your commute found the crowd as annoying as you did & what they did to deal with it.
  • Type in "looking for" and select a city from the "Pick Location" menu, to see what people are talking about in locations around the world.

    • How can I respond to or share the Tips I find in TipTop search results?

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    Move your cursor over a Tip's image and an interactive popup box will appear. Depending on the type of Tip (tweet, product review, web snippet, etc.), there will be a variety of ways to interact with the Tip and its source. Generally you can "favorite", "share", "embed" & "reply" to Tips.

  • Clicking the "favorite" icon does two things: It adds the Tip to "My TipTop" & it opens a Twitter update window so you can send a tweet indicating that you like the Tip. For example, I like @TheChaiCart's "Chai and samosa during the South Asian Film" tip http://ftt.nu/mijKG in TipTop at http://ftt.nu/swGRP for "Asian"
  • Clicking the "share" icon opens up a popup box allowing you to share the Tip through email or a social network, like Twitter.
  • Clicking the "embed" icon opens up a popup box allowing you to get the code to embed a widget on your web site displaying the Tip.
  • Clicking the "reply" icon opens up a Twitter update window so you can send a message to the author of the Tip.

    In the popup box you can also see more content from the author, product or web site by clicking navigational arrows or the profile image itself. See Search Results Help for a more visual explanation. .

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    On Tip profile images, what does clicking on ‘To’ and ‘From’ do?

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    By clicking "To" on a Twitter profile image, you will get messages that people have written to that person, displayed in typical TipTop search results format. By clicking "From" on the image you will get a similar list of sorted messages that person has written. For example, you can see a complete profile for any Twitter ID like @TheChaiCart, to get overall sentiment trends, topics of interest, and the best Tips from, to, or about them.

    What does clicking the icon, "E" or "S" next to
    a link (URL) found in a Tip do?

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    Many links used in messages are shortened so the original URL can't be seen. If a URL has been shortened, clicking "E" will expand the link. After it has been expanded, clicking "S" will shrink it back to the shortened URL.

    Who are the people appearing as "Our Top Tipsters"
    on some search results pages?

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    Everyone with a Twitter account has the chance of becoming a "Top Tipster" for a particular search results page if they post quality & pertinent Tips that other TipTopSM users "favorite", "share" or "reply" to. Top Tipsters can also be influencers, experts or people actively discussing topics related to the search query at a particular time.

    Since "Top Tipsters" usually don't know that they are being featured in TipTopSM's results pages, we encourage you to interact with them, and click "Tip off" to let them know they can get a "Top Tipster" badge! For example, @StockSystems is a Top Tipper in TipTop for "Dow OR Nasdaq OR Forex" at http://ftt.nu/OAbra - get your badge at http://ftt.nu/FodCh.

    What can you do with "My TipTop?

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    My TipTop will become a core component of TipTop's vision enabling people to bring any web content, analyzed through TipTop's semantic engine, into manageable snippets. Anyone can use My TipTop by searching on TipTopSM and adding Tips or queries for any topic, saving your search results, comparing topics across sentiment scores, and matching people's questions (Tops) with others' answers (Tips).

    To learn more about using My TipTop please checkout our blog entry "Organizing Social Search & Matching Tips with My TipTop". (Posted 07/16/2010)

    What is cool about TipTop Shopping?

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    TipTop Shopping is a unique comparison shopping site for products sold on the Amazon.com shopping platform. Shoppers using TipTopSM can:
    1. Search millions of products, with TipTopSM's unique product ratings for attributes like "Overall Quality", "Value for Money", "Features" and "Safety".
    2. Browse listings, view real product reviews & add to "My (TipTop) Space" to compare across important product attributes.
    3. Go to "My Space" to compare ratings for multiple items & buy the products which are best for you.

    Products are available from the following Amazon.com shopping categories: Apparel, Automotive, Baby, Beauty Supplies, Books, Classical Music, Digital Music, MP3 Music, DVD Movies, Consumer Electronics, Gourmet Food, Personal Care, Home & Garden, Jewelry, Kindle Books, Kitchen Supplies Music, Musical Instruments, Outdoor Living, Computer Hardware, Pet Supplies, Shoes, Silver Jewelry, Computer Software, Sporting Goods, Tools, Toys, VHS Movies, Video, Video Games, Watches, Wireless, and Wireless Accessories.

    Read more cool things about TipTop Shopping on our blog post, "TipTop Holiday Gift Shopping: Product Reviews, Ratings & Comparisons". (Posted 12/09/2009)

    How are product ratings and scores calculated?

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    Product ratings and scores for Quality, Features, Safety, Money, etc. are derived from semantic analysis of product reviews from Amazon.com using TipTopSM's proprietary natural language processing algorithms. In My Space, products can be compared on these attributes and Price.

    How can I buy the product(s) found on TipTop Shopping?

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    TipTop Shopping offers product comparison, reviews and ratings of products sold on Amazon.com. After searching TipTop Shopping, you can click the "Buy from Amazon.com" button below each item to check out on Amazon.com. If you want to compare products, click "Add to My Space" below an item. After adding items to compare, click "Go to My Space" in the title bar. From your My Space section you can move items into "Selected Products" and click "Buy from Amazon.com" to complete your purchase. For information on payment methods, shipping and Amazon account information please refer to Amazon's Help page.

    Learn more about using "My (TipTop) Space" from TipTop's blog, "Its Simple, Shop with "My TipTop Space" to Compare Products & Make Great Decisions". (Posted 04/09/2010)

    You may want to check out TipTop's blog post on "Get TipTop Anywhere, Be TipTop Anytime". (posted 01/29/2010)

    How is http://ftt.nu different than http://feeltiptop.com?

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    Both domains are owned by TipTopSM. The ftt.nu domain is primarily used to provide shortened URLs or web addresses for publication on micro-blogging sites like Twitter.

    Does TipTop have a Privacy Policy or Terms of Service?

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    Here is the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service. Links to these policies can also be found at the bottom of the website.

    How can I get more information about TipTop Technologies, Inc.?

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    For company news and product updates check out TipTop's Blog. To read and discuss industry related topics become a TipTop Fan on Facebook. On Twitter you can follow @twittiptop. Please go to TipTopSM Technologies' contact page to find the best place to direct questions.