Social Media in the News: Twitter Gives $10m to MIT to Study Tweets

Recently, Twitter agreed to a pretty impressive deal with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:  A deal that promises the college $10 million over the course of 5 years. "What could Twitter possible want with MIT?" you may ask. The answer is very simple:  Twitter would like the school to monitor every tweet that has every been posted and every will be posted. Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, has handed over the stream of every tweet being posted to Twitter as well as the archive for every post that ever been written. The purpose of this study is to collect information and trends that could possibly help solve some of society's problems. The main article I read can be found at this link http://goo.gl/FhYpWx.

When I first read this article, I thought that the idea of trying to solve social problems by studying tweets was kind of ridiculous. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this actually seemed like a great idea. After all, Twitter and other social media seem to be some of the most up-to-date information sources on the planet. If you're wondering what is going on in our country at any given moment, you can check what's trending on Twitter and instantly be given news articles, opinions, pictures, links to other articles, and more. But Twitter and other social media are much more than sites to just check current events or news trends. These sites see a lot of personal opinions and arguments that have to do with pretty much every topic, and bring rise to many ideas. Many of the topics posted about can be looked at sociologically, and analyzed to see how most of society feels about a given topic. With this information, studies could be designed to go about solving some of societies more complicated problems.

Even if this study doesn't do all that is expected as far as solving problems in society, I think it would be very interesting to see what kind of things are most posted about and how people go about voicing their ideas, problems, and possible solutions. However, I feel as though this information will only apply to the younger generation as there are far more teens and young adults that have and post on Twitter. But still I am excited to see the results of this project, and what answers (or lack or answers) that it may hold for the future of society.