Analyzing tweets in real time

The computer giant SGI has teamed up with scientists at the University of Illinois to create the Twitter Global Heartbeat, a "real-time combined population, tone and geographic analysis and heat map visualization of Tweets." That is, the Twitter Global Heartbeat analyzes 10% of Twitter's 500 million daily tweets as they are posted and analyzes the content, tone, and location. The project converts the data to a map, showing hot spots of positive and negative comments. The video above is an analysis of tweets as Hurricane Sandy approached the US coast and moved inland. (I found it thanks to Robert Wright's post in TheAtlantic.com)

It's a new service (my choice of videos was Sandy or the US Presidential election). There are also some snapshots and graphs. Here's an example of the former, picturing "Global Sentiment from Live Twitter Feed." (Red is negative, blue is positive.)

The snapshot is November 15 - I can see why the Mideast is such a hotspot of unhappiness, but what was happening in Indonesia then? If you know, let us know in the comments.

You can follow the Twitter Global Hotspot's twitter feed here.