EDF Energy’s Olympic tweeters to light up London Eye
By Simon Hilliard on Friday, July 20, 2012
EDF Energy, the low-carbon electricity supplier, lover of bouncy viral mascots and Olympics sponsor, has hit on a nice social media / stunt combo.
The company will be grabbing the attentions of Londoners and visitors to the capital during the games with a nightly light show on the London Eye. What makes this one different? It’s driven by sentiment on Twitter.
According to The Telegraph, the colour scheme of the London Eye’s nightly light show will change depending on the mood of British tweeters towards the Olympics and Paralympics.
The stunt will track sentiment of tweets using an ‘intuitive algorithm’ developed by a professor and students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The eye will be lit up for 30 minutes each night from 9pm, turning yellow when we’re all in a good mood, purple when we’re in a grump and green when we’re somewhere in-between. Presumably yellow is there to match the colour of joyful gold medals, while green captures the jealously of seeing other countries beat us to the no.1 spot. As for purple…well, purple’s a nice colour.
Anyone unable to kick-it on London’s South Bank can watch a live stream of light show each night on the EDF website.