Twitter and the Superbowl – A Conversation Timeline
February 4, 2009 :: Steve FisherTwitter seems to be growing exponentially since the election debates to really capture the conversation. As its member base has grown at a hockey stick pace, people are signing up to the service to join the conversation. Along the way Twitter has been evolving to a true conversation tracking tool. Look at the way the conversation has evolved.
Early Twitter API Examples
Twitter has been the king of API extesibility. There have been so many sites and software clients created to take advantage of Twitter. An early example of capturing the conversation is Twittervision created by Dave Troy. It used the API to show Twitter on a geographical basis live and up to the minute. Very cool and the tip of what we have learned is a HUGE iceberg.
We saw Twitter itself launch election.twitter.com to track the conversation during the debates and things were insane with the recent election which seems to have everyone looking at how to better capture the conversation.
Conversation Evolved – Twitter and the Superbowl
Last weekend we saw what many are calling one of the most thrilling games in Superbowl history. Granted, this Superbowl had the first 100 yard TD return in Superbowl history and a huge upset by Pittsburgh with under a minute remaining in the game. The half-time show was family friendly with a great rock-and-roll set by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band. No wardrobe malfunctions were anywhere in sight.
Matthew Bloch and Shan Carter of The New York Times put together an extremely focused version of Twittervision that included a map of the United States and shows the location and frequency of commonly used words in Super Bowl related messages.
You can drag the timeline and see the dynamic changes and on the left filter for even more specific terms like “Ads” or “Player Names”. I used a combination of both and it is really cool.
You can find it at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/02/sports/20090202_superbowl_twitter.html and give it a try.
I believe that this is not a one time example and you will start to see this type of thing quite a bit over the next year.
Are We Tracking the Zeitgeist by the Minute Now?
The term Zeitgeist is a German language expression literally translated: Zeit, time; Geist, spirit, meaning “the spirit of the age. But we are a culture with short attention spans and rapidly changing tastes.
Does this mean that where Google captures the popular search terms for the day and year to show what we are interested in, Twitter has now become the channel to measure this sprit of the age in minutes not in months or years?
What do you think? Please chime in.
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