Author: Lindsey Hill, R2integrated
Some of you may already be familiar with R2i’s SMASH technology. For those who aren’t, SMASH (social mash-up) is a platform that allows you to create a single multimedia showcase that incorporates live feeds from multiple channels, including Twitter, Flickr, text messaging, mobile video, Ustream, webcasting and multimedia. The result is a novel and compelling experience that allows you to see and participate in the thoughts, opinions, and related media from many different sources at once for a single given event.
To provide a live example of the power and flexibility of this technology, we created a SMASH site in less than 20 minutes for showcasing the social media buzz surrounding the memorial for Michael Jackson. The enormous following of one of the world’s most influential pop icons is evident in the continuous stream of live images and messages. As of this morning, almost 250,000 tweets were streamed live from Twitter together with over 3,000 photos from Flickr.
What we found fascinating was the emotion that was expressed in only 140 characters. We witnessed everything from sadness and mourning, to quite the opposite—frustration and anger. We were able to easily observe live emotions from people around the world, at about 150 tweets (emotions) per second.
To see it for yourself check out: http://mj.r2ismash.com