Twitter and MIT Link for Social Media Understanding

Twitter is donating $10m over the next five years to help The MIT Media Lab create a new division to explore how people use social media networks.

MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) describes the Lab is an interdisciplinary research laboratory devoted to projects at the convergence of technology, multimedia, sciences, art and design. It will now include a new 'Laboratory for Social Machines' (LSM) enjoying access to Twitter's real-time public stream of tweets, as well as to the archive of every tweet ever created. Using this and other data, it will focus on the development of new technologies to make sense of semantic and social media patterns across public mass media, social media, data streams and digital content. In addition, pattern discovery and data visualization will be explored to reveal interaction patterns and shared interests in relevant social media systems.

A main goal for the LSM will be to create new platforms for both individuals and institutions to identify, discuss and act on societal problems, and develop tools and mobile apps to enable new forms of public communication. Though funded by Twitter, the LSM will have complete operational and academic independence, and its benefactor's will be just one of the many social and mass media platforms across which its students and staff will work.

The initiative will be led by Deb Roy (pictured), co-founder of MIT Media Lab offshoot Bluefin Labs, which provided social media comments about US TV programs and was later acquired by Twitter. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Media Lab, while also serving as Twitter's Chief Media Scientist.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo comments: 'With this investment, Twitter is seizing the opportunity to go deeper into research to understand the role Twitter and other platforms play in the way people communicate, the effect that rapid and fluid communication can have and apply those findings to complex societal issues.'

Web sites: www.media.mit.edu and www.twitter.com .