Microblogging site Twitter is gearing up to partner with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a new project, which hopes to gain a better understanding of online interactions.
Twitter is investing $10 million for the development of the Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM) over a five-year period.
The new MIT Lab will produce a new social networking platform, analytic tools and also mobile apps that will connect individuals better. The LSM will be able to access Twitter's live streams of tweets and the site's public archives right from the time Twitter began. The project will focus on the creation of novel technology that can understand "semantic and social patterns."
Through the investment, Twitter aims to understand how Twitter and other alternative platforms play an integral role in the way people communicate with each other. According to CEO Dick Costolo, the site also hopes to gain insight into the effects of the quick, interactive and seamless communication processes that they offer. The findings can be applied to "complex societal issues."
The LSM will be led by Deb Roy, an associate professor at Media Lab. Roy is also Twitter's chief media scientist.
"The Laboratory for Social Machines will experiment in areas of public communication and social organization where humans and machines collaborate on problems that can't be solved manually or through automation alone," reveals Roy. "Social feedback loops based on analysis of public media and data can be an effective catalyst for increasing accountability and transparency -- creating mutual visibility among institutions and individuals."
The LSM will also be observing prevailing social networks like Facebook and also study newer ones like Ello to identify patterns that exist in social media, digital content and data streams, among other concepts. MIT's new lab will sift through the different tweets to determine patterns, all by deploying large-scale analysis techniques.
Despite being funded by Twitter, the LSM will remain an independent entity when it comes to its operations and research policies. Whether Twitter will have ownership rights to the findings or products of the LSM is not clear at this juncture.
