Announcement: Twitter gives MIT $10M and access to the firehose to build a Laboratory for Social Machines

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced on Wednesday that it is launching a new “laboratory for social machines” to look at the impact that social media of all kinds has on society, and said the new lab will be funded by a $10-million donation from Twitter over the next five years. The new research group will also get access to the full firehose of real-time Twitter data, as well as the entire archive of existing tweets dating back to the first one in 2006.

MIT said that the Laboratory for Social Machines — which will be based in the Media Lab run by Joi Ito, an angel investor and founder of the consulting company Digital Garage — will focus on the development of new technologies that can “make sense of semantic and social patterns across the broad span of public mass media, social media, data streams, and digital content.”

The Lab plans to use pattern discovery and data visualization techniques to study patterns in the stream of data from Twitter, and from other social-media platforms as well, and will also develop collaborative tools and mobile apps that enable “new forms of public communication and social organization.” The Lab says it will partner with both journalistic organizations as well as social groups and movements.

Source: Twitter gives MIT $10M and access to the firehose to build a Laboratory for Social Machines — Tech News and Analysis