First Impressions is designed to help you better understand a person before you’ve ever said a word to each other. All we need to do is copy and paste a small sample of something they’ve said online and Cyrano does the rest.

Disclaimer 1: before we go into any examples, we want to mention that the amount of content you put into Navigate directly impacts its accuracy. It only asks for 100 words, but 500 words are better and 1,000 words are great. Depending on how important this first impression is to you will determine how much effort you want to put into getting the best, most accurate report possible.

Disclaimer 2: everything we recommend here will be with information the person has made publicly available. We encourage you to be respectful of people’s privacy and only use what they’ve chosen to share with the general public.

So then the question is: Where can you find something they’ve said online? Here are the top 7 sources for what you are looking for.

One of the great things about Twitter is it’s often written casually in a stream of consciousness. This means it will usually be their most authentic self. It usually only takes 4 or 5 tweets to get a big enough sample of their speech patterns to run an analysis. Avoid retweets and find tweets with more words and fewer emojis and links in them for the best results.

Some people love posting paragraphs on Facebook, and if they do, they make your work easy. The simplest thing to do is just copy and paste a few of their posts, but their replies to other people’s posts are often an even better source of material. Rather than just being a status update about their weekend, people often share their opinions on various topics in replies. Clicking into a person’s profile and looking through their activity feed will make this really fast. If they are an active member of a group, you’ll often find longer posts and replies from them there.

If you are researching a person for a business meeting or pitch/presentation, LinkedIn is the best place to go first. Their bio may or may not be the best source of information, because that’s often highly edited and sometimes even written by other people about the person you want to learn about. Their posts and comments, however, are them talking about things in the professional world (as opposed to the personal comments usually found in Facebook posts).

Did you know that almost all the content on YouTube has been automatically transcribed? To find it, look for the 3 dots (often called a “hamburger menu”) underneath the video. Once you click the 3 dots you will see an option to “Open Transcript.” You can copy and paste the contents of the “transcript” window that opens up. You don’t need to remove the timecode or spaces that will show up, First Impressions knows to ignore that and focus on the words.

A simple google search for the person's name and the word “interview” next to it often pulls up more than people would expect. This might result in a podcast (many of which offer transcripts now) or something they did for a website or small magazine/paper/website/etc. Just look for the quotes in it. You don’t want what the words other people say about them - you only want to include the direct quotes of them speaking in their own words.

Many people are active within an online community such as Quora, or maybe some niche related to their work or hobbies. If they’ve attached their real name to their online profile on that site, it’s a great source of data.

Many Tesla owners, or people who want a Tesla, visit various online communities dedicated to discussing the cars, tech, and company. People who are interested in remote-controlled cars join forums related to their interests. Whether it’s professional or personal, finding a relevant online community might be the biggest source of data for some people.

Let’s not overthink this. Many people have a dedicated website where they post information about what they are up to or accomplishments they are proud of. If you want to make a great first impression, check to see if they have a website. If they do, start by looking for a blog section or “About me” kind of page.