Nation’s Tweets Light Up London 2012

To celebrate the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, EDF Energy has devised an innovative plan, which incorporates the EDF Energy London Eye, the general public, Twitter and a unique lightshow. The official electricity provider has tapped into the world of social media, giving the Great British public the means to literally light up the London skyline with their tweets.

The hope is the idea will harness the excitement, buzz and conversations about the Olympics and give people up and down the country the chance to support and spur Team GB to strive for glory. EDF Energy is providing all tweeting Brits with an extra incentive to show their support for the nation. As the people of Britain tweet about the Olympic Games, EDF Energy will collect the data, read the sentiment and label each tweet ‘positive’, ‘negative’ or ‘neutral’, and display the mood of the nation in lights on the EDF Energy London Eye every night at 9pm and again at 10pm.

Making a small contribution to a lightshow may not seem like much of a reward to some, but the real feel-good factor here is the sense of belonging, as anyone in Britain can be involved. Given the monicker ‘Energy of the Nation’, this initiative relies on some cutting edge technology and innovative data-handling. As tweets fly through cyberspace, containing the official #energy2012 hashtag or terms such as ‘Olympics’ or ‘London 2012’, their location of origin is determined using GPS and/or IP address tracking. Those that are sent from within the UK pass through a filter and become eligible.

Now it gets really interesting. Relevant tweets are scanned using an algorithm designed to measure sentiment, one way or the other. Words such as ‘brilliant’ and ‘fantastic’ carry positive scores, which are further increased by the close proximity of ‘booster’ words, such as ‘very’, as well as exclamation marks and positive emoticons. Negative sentiments are detected in the same way. Eventually, a percentage of positive sentiment is produced, which is displayed in lights upon the EDF Energy London Eye for all to see. The EDF Energy London Eye is the home of ‘EDF Energy Mission Control’ – the central hub of operations, where data is collected and studied.

Although the ‘Energy of the Nation’ phenomenon relies upon regular tweets, and therefore use of the Twitter website and/or app by participators, EDF Energy has launched their own dedicated mobile application entitled Energy2012. This is designed to allow its users to keep up to date with not just the nation’s mood, but that of each region, using the interactive ‘EDF Energy Map’. This tool, also available online at http://edfenergyofthenation.com, allows users to zoom in on areas throughout the country and interact with tweets that were posted locally. EDF Energy has already seen Olympic fever grow in the first few days of action, with the nation taking to Twitter to express their feelings about the Opening Ceremony, which saw positivity soar to 79% during the awe-inspiring event. Athletes have been thanking the public for their support on Twitter and EDF Energy has seen significant peaks in positivity as both Lizzie Armitstead and Becky Addlington took home medals.

This campaign is ambitious and bold, truly embracing the spirit of social media. There may have been a lot of skepticism regarding London 2012 over the past few years, but now that it’s here, Britain is really getting behind the Games and the athletes. EDF Energy have provided us with a whole new way to show support for the nation.

[This is a 3rd party, sponsored post. Image courtesy of Robert Brown]