London’s famous Ferris wheel, the London Eye, will be used for much more than simply fulfilling its maiden mission, this Olympics. Yes, the London Eye will be used to depict the mood of the nation during the upcoming Olympic Games. Wondering how they will come to know about what the complete nation is feeling, then here is the answer. EDF Energy will be taking help of tweets that people will post on Twitter during the event. The company has already joined hands with Twitter sentiment Analysts, Mike Thelwall and Sosolimited, who are experts in interpreting sentiments behind the tweets. They will actually be scanning the tweets that will be posted with phrases like “Olympics”, “Torch Relay”, “#energy2012″ and “London 2012”. Once the scanning has been done, a sentiment algorithm will decide the amount of positive and negative emotions contained in the message. Whatever sentiments will overrule, it will be reflected in a particular color on the London Eye. For instance, if the sentiments of people were positive then it will reflect yellow light, green will depict neutral sentiments and purple will be taken for negative. The color of the light will change every 30 minutes, depending on the sentiments of the people. This is not for the first time that UK is taking help of Twitter to understand the mood of the nation. Kraft’s Jell-O brand, last year at the same time ran an online and outdoor campaign called the Jell-O Pudding Face Mood Meter, where it made use of a man’s face who was either smiling or frowning based on how many smile or frown emoticons were witnessed on Twitter.
