One of the new LinkedIn Apps is a monitor of Twitter postings that lets you know when someone has posted a Tweet on your company.  LinkedIn is naming this app “Company Buzz.”  This sounds like a great idea, but I have to admit that at this time, the app leaves a lot to be desired.
Here’s what LinkedIn says about the app:

Ever wonder what people are saying about your company? Company Buzz shows you the twitter activity associated with your company. View tweets, trends and top key words. Customize your topics and share with your coworkers.

The basic structure of the app is that it allows you to look for the keywords of your company’s name.  Say your company is “Widgets USA” — LinkedIn would set up a simple Twitter feed that would search “Widgets” and “USA” and give you back the results.  Very simple process, and you can modify the terms to help narrow or expand the results as you need.  However, the edits only allow you to add words that have to show up in the post.  So, if your company is spelled a couple of different ways, or has an acronym as well as a full name, then you would have to set up different searches for each of the variations.  

In other words, you couldn’t have it look for either “UPS” OR “United Parcel Services”.  So, that’s kind of a bummer, and kind of a big deal that can really limit the functionality of a pretty good idea.  I’ve fired off a question to the LinkedIn Customer Service group, so hopefully, they can either show me how to do it, or can get this message up to the powers-that-be and add this functionality to the app.
I also couldn’t find a way to “share with [my] co-workers” as the promo tells me I can do.  (If I’m overlooking the way to do this, someone let me know!!)
I do like a couple of the things that LinkedIn’s Company Buzz does do:
1.  Buzz Words –  Simple resource that points out the words that are mentioned the most in the results list.  Click on any of these, and it will limit the Tweets to those that have the buzz word in them.  
2.  Trends – Another simple tool, but useful as well.  This shows the timeline of Tweets and how many were posted on each day during that timeline.  
Now, neither of these makes up for the lack of search functionality, but I think that this is a good idea in the making, and hopefully will get better with time.