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Now, monitor NFL fans’ excitement levels through Twitter sans TV
A computer program, which can tell within seconds when touchdowns, interceptions and other big plays occur during the Nation Football League has been created.
SportSense, which uses millions of Twitter subscribers as living “sensors” to monitor the level of excitement of fans during the NFL without turning the TV on, has been created by engineers from Rice University and Motorola Mobility.
“People don’t often think of themselves as being sensors, but each of us constantly senses and reacts to our environment,” Lin Zhong, SportSense co-creator, said.
“Thanks to social media sites like Twitter, it is now possible to capture those reactions — for millions of people — in real time. That”s what SportSense does,” he stated.
In collaboration with engineers from the Betaworks group at the Motorola Mobility Applied Research Center, Zhong and his students began creating the software to monitor and analyse tweets back in 2010.
“We chose football because touchdowns, interceptions and other events in the game cause a lot of excitement and lead a lot of people to tweet.
“We found that a careful examination of the tweets could tell us what was happening in the game. The program can usually tell within 20 seconds when a big play like a touchdown occurs. Often, we see that even before it appears on the scrolling banners on ESPN and other sites,” he stated.
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