Have you ever wondered what people were talking about online? People are Tweeting and Blogging about all kinds of things, and some of these things are related to the Balanced Scorecard. How are you supposed to keep up? I think it is too much to ask to search Google, then search Google Blogs, then search Twitter, and then look for other search engines and other social networks. Well we have made it all much easier at our redesigned BSC Community.

We created a website that searches Google for general news. Then it searches with both Technorati and Google Blogs (both blog searching tools) to find any blog posts on a particular topic. Finally, it searches Twitter for any micro-blog posts. If you thought people were only using blogs to talk about politics or personal passions, you will be surprised at the results. If you thought people only used Twitter to wonder aloud about their sandwich or next plane flight, you will be surprised at the results. We take all of the searches and display the results aggregated onto one page. Check it out at www.bsccommunity.com.

When you get to the site, it will search "Balanced Scorecard" by default. You will see what is happening in the news, in blogs, and in Twitter, and some of the information is very recent. At the time of this writing, there have been 12 Tweets and 18 Blog posts in the last 2 days about Balanced Scorecard. Someone even Tweeted during a strategic planning meeting that I was conducting at a client site yesterday. So you can get up to the minute thinking about this "living" concept. Some might think that this is much better than just reading the 1996 book on the topic. Keep in mind that the information in blogs and Twitter are not facts, just different individuals' thoughts on a topic.

Just under the name BSC Community, you can search within the displayed results. This is a great way to sift through the information on the page and search for specific terms within the results. I searched for "nonprofit" and it turned up the Ascendant website as well as information from a newspaper in Qatar. There is also another neat feature you can use in the BSC Community website. You can change the default search. So if you are not interested in Balanced Scorecard, you could go to the upper right of the screen and type in another term, like Siamese Cats or Matchbox Cars or Swine Flu and see what the mashup returns.

I tried this site out with my uncle and searched for a company where he is a board member. The site returned a recent press release, two blog posts, and a few Tweets on the press release. Very interesting. Anyway, let us know what you think about the new community, and we are very open to feedback. Please give us your comments here, or you can send it to us via email from the community website. Enjoy.

• Nonprofit Network - Exchanging Ideas (October 29, 2008)