Tuesday, November 20, 2012

The Future Is Here: Twitter = Eye Popping Real Time Polling

Caught another fabulous article at the Huffpost, this one opening more horizons than I can imagine.  A game changer that will forever alter the way polls are conducted and social information is gathered.

An outfit called SGI has sicked their super-computer on Twitter tweets to determine the mood, or tone, of Twitter using populations at any given moment.  They have produced a series of videos and maps that illustrate people's emotions, angry/happy, Romney/Obama, that is eye opening in both its visualizations and in its possibilities.  Of course, these charts and videos only represent 10% of the Twitter using population, but for those populations it is dead on and portends target marketing the likes of which we have never before seen.

U.S. sentiment from live Twitter feed on the date and time listed.  Red equals negative sentiment, blue positive.  Don't know what was going on at 10:43 AM on the 15th but this was the mood of the country at that time.  I think I was in the loo.
Now here is some useful information.  If you like beer, you know where to live.  Although, my area of Baja Georgia is bright red and there seems to be no shortage of drunks around here.  I guess we drink whiskey.

Check out this video of election night.  Really cool but also frightening considering how this type of trending can reach so much of the population before they have even voted.  There is no more powerful motivator to those undecided than the "bandwagon" effect.  It's been used by marketers and promoters for years.  On the other hand, it could also be a motivator for the opposition to get out and vote if they see the other side winning.  Either way,  I see this as an enormous threat to free, uninfluenced elections and something that needs to be addressed.  But the technology behind it is fascinating and worth a look-see.



16 comments:

  1. Yes this will take about four hours of strategy sessions to manipulate the visual information to say what any certain group wishes it to look like. A digital Citizens united. Now twits are people too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Weird to think of the election being called before the polls close - it would be so disheartening if you hadn't even voted yet.

    I think my town might be on the border of "much more beer" and "much more church." I'm going with beer.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That was wonderful.

    Tweeting. I may have to stop making fun of that word.

    Pearl

    ReplyDelete
  4. that first picture was really fascinating...def the info leaked out early can hugely impact the end result and voter apathy...or feeling secure and not voting...

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm reminded of a Star Trek episode....no, I'm not going there.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The biggest problem I see with this is drawing conclusions based on such a small database. It would seem to me that even though a lot of people may be Twitter fanatics, surely that number is very small when compared to the overall population. And of those who ARE tweeting, what percentage of them are tweeting about politics, or about anything else of any particular significance? The potential for using (and abusing) information gleaned from Twitter is pretty darned interesting, though. And more than a teensy bit scary.

    ReplyDelete
  7. It is indeed a wonderful thing knowing that beer is more important than religion in my neck of the woods.

    ReplyDelete
  8. U.S. sentiment from live Twitter feed on the date and time listed. Red equals negative sentiment, blue positive.

    I've forgotten most of the details but some show on History or Discovery Channel a few years ago had some guy who was running data on what millions people were searching for on the web and he found that it had a curious correlation with actual events that took place a few hours later. The data seemed to suggest people had some unconscious knowledge of future events. This guy could have massaged the data but I also seem to remember a few other scientists taking it serious enough to look into his results.

    ReplyDelete
  9. We're getting closer and closer to that movie "Minority Report," where people can get arrested for crimes they haven't committed yet.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Conspirators will be manipulating data to change the outcome of the planet, eventually. Unless we give them more beer.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I find the whole concept terrifying. Are even my thoughts freely available to dark forces?1984 has been and gone and long overtaken.
    I shall have to go and lie down and hide my head under the duvet. Do you think that would work?

    ReplyDelete
  12. It would seem the timbre of these comments is mostly "more beer". I can see I have fallen in with the right crowd.

    ReplyDelete
  13. But where are the purple areas? Surely there are people who agree with Benjamin Franklin..."Beer is proof that God loves us."

    ReplyDelete
  14. I'm not on twitter..my reason is if you are on twitter and send out tweets your a twit..I have worked long and hard to be a asshole, and damn if I'm going to down grade from asshole to a twit.happy thanksgiving.

    ReplyDelete

Sorry about the comment thingy folks. Too much spam.