Yvette Vickers, a former Playboy playmate and B-movie star, best known for her role in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, would have been 83 last August, but nobody knows exactly how old she was when she died. According to the Los…
English: Twitter Inc headquarters Deutsch: Twitter Inc Hauptsitz Français : Twitter Inc Siège Español: la sede de twitter inc (Photo credit: Wikipedia)barracudalabs.com
English: The content of tweets on Twitter, based on the data gathered by Pear Analytics in 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Most adults I know dismissed Twitter, with only 140 characters at their disposal, as a waste of time just a year ago. But after the Iranian revolts, the Arab Spring and the London riots in which Twitter played a key part, it is not so easily dismissed anymore. But its seemingly brief and trivial nature is now proving to be its key advantage: it provides a constant thermometer of public sentiment with a time stamp and tidy little packaging. Just as molecular biology has allowed us to reduce physical life to traceable and analyzable bits ready for computers to digest, so is Twitter creating those bits out of our social experience. And this is the realm of anthropology.
One recent article examines several Cornellsocial scientists who are doing just that, analyzing 509 million tweets, gathered between February 2008 and January 2010, using linguistic software to score their positivity based on word choices. The noted a mood timeline for 2.4 million individuals from 84 countries, and noted that happiness has a peak in the morning (see graph below from their website, http://timeu.se/) before the typical workday begins, and then fades as the day progresses, only to climb again late in the day. Rather be due to work (as one would expect) they suggest it is due to biology since it occurs on weekends as well (explaining our love of sleeping in, as it delays the high).
This UML diagram describes the domain of LinkedIn social networking system. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Dan is an interesting guy with a strong web and social networking background. He is a social media scientist and has designed a number of linguistic tools to analyze online behavior.
A number of companies are now developing positions such as Chief Twitter Officer, Chief Facebook officer, LinkedIn, YouTube etc. due to the growth of customer feedback in online web 2.0 communities and the need to address it.
Don’t you hate when the coolest new Web services are by-invitation-only closed betas? For those who aren’t on the invite list or aren’t friends with A-list bloggers, InviteShare is your ticket in.
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