Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Anne on May 26, 2010 at 3:12pm

done! thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Peter Muller on May 26, 2010 at 5:45pm

Yeah, I understand, I don't do Facebook either. I'll post a link to the official Chicago Stolen Bikes Registry on the Twitter page. BTW, you don't need an account use Twitter. You can just search chistolenbikes and see the feed. You only need an account to tweet yourself. In fact, I think you can hook up the Twitter feed RSS and just receive updates if anyone posts a stolen bike. Spread the word.

H3N3 said:

Peter,
I don't do facebook or twitter so I would like to ask if there's a way people tweeting about their stolen bikes could be encouraged to make a detailed report to the Chicago Stolen Bike Registry as well. Thanks for any help w/ that.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Muller on May 26, 2010 at 5:49pm

For those of you without Twitter accounts, you can follow the feed and help be on the lookout for stolen bikes here:

http://twitter.com/chistolenbikes

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Permalink Reply by Peter Muller on May 26, 2010 at 6:03pm

I fully support the Stolen Bike Registry and I think it's an excellent, well implemented tool. The problem is with speed. If someone tweets about their bike stolen as soon as it happens, that tweet immediately pings every single Twitter follower of chiStolenBikes, instantly. Most Twitter users send those tweets from their cell phones so it could be done faster without having to wait for the victim to get home and get online before reporting the theft.

I will gladly hand the chiStolenBikes account over to the webmaster of the Chicago Stolen Bikes Registry. There is a way to add the Twitter feed directly to the website via Twitter's account settings.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Muller on May 26, 2010 at 6:15pm

Check your messages.

H3N3 said:

Thanks, Peter. That definitely helps my understanding. Anything that could potentially help someone get their bike back is worth pursuing.
The CSBR is me, a guy named Paul, and a guy named Jason.
Paul does the technical stuff, I do the day-to-day approval/editing/communicating, and Jason serves as a backup to me (could use an additional person in his role actually.) I've alerted Paul to this thread and asked if he knows how to have new reports generate tweets, or for any other ideas. At one point he was going to integrate with Everyblock Chicago but they got sucked up by some corporation. In any event no need to hand anything over-- let's see how it works and think of how we can connect/integrate.


Peter Muller said:

I fully support the Stolen Bike Registry and I think it's an excellent, well implemented tool. The problem is with speed. If someone tweets about their bike stolen as soon as it happens, that tweet immediately pings every single Twitter follower of chiStolenBikes, instantly. Most Twitter users send those tweets from their cell phones so it could be done faster without having to wait for the victim to get home and get online before reporting the theft.

I will gladly hand the chiStolenBikes account over to the webmaster of the Chicago Stolen Bikes Registry. There is a way to add the Twitter feed directly to the website via Twitter's account settings.

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Permalink Reply by Adam "Cezar" Jenkins on May 27, 2010 at 3:34am

I think it will be useful as a supplementary device in addiction to the Stolen Bike Registry. Twitter is very good at getting the word out quickly about something. I think the best thing to do might be, if you see someone tweet about a stolen bike, reply with a nice nudge to also file with the registry.

H3N3 said:

Hours and hours of work have gone into the stolen bike registry and it's been a constant battle to get people to use it. We still have a constant barrage of people posting fairly useless reports to chifg, craigslist, etc. of the variety that say "if you see it punch the rider in the nuts" but provide almost no other useful info. The registry was started to hopefully make us a little smarter than that, and also to help educate and to provide a tool to get some clues as to how to combat bike theft.
There's a lot of advantage in having one central resource that's well-indexed and doesn't expire or become impossible to search after a short time, so I don't understand how the Twitter feed will help and am concerned that it will actually hurt-- but some of that may be just not being familiar enough with Twitter to understand what the benefit would be. Any handholding in this regard appreciated.
Also any ideas for how the two resources could be integrated with each-other?

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Permalink Reply by Amber K on May 27, 2010 at 3:36am

This could possibly work if enough people would sign up. Good idea!

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Permalink Reply by Peter Muller on May 27, 2010 at 8:03am

Hey, there is no need for any kind of nudges. You guys are missing the point. Twitter and CSBR are two completely different tools with completely different purposes. One should not be taking away from the other no matter what.

Twitter is for quick, up to the minute, unofficial reporting. When a bike is stolen, the victim is likely not ready or able to post to CSBR right away, and the biggest difference in recovery of a stolen bike can be made in the first 15 minutes. Twitter can alert all followers the same minute a stolen bike is tweeted.

CSBR is a more official method of reporting stolen bikes. The problem is that it doesn't alert anyone who isn't looking for it and actively visiting the site. It is best and most commonly used when the victim has returned home and actively posted the information "card" on the stolen bike. By that time, the thief is long gone and the information is used to recover the bike if someone happens to see the info and spot the bike.

So although CSBR is an excellent tool to have in this city, if the victim uses Twitter immediately, then posts the information on the CSBR website, we can increase the percentage of recovered bikes.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Perz on May 27, 2010 at 8:18am

You might want to post this on craigslist too.

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