Paper Reading #25: Twitinfo: aggregating and visualizing microblogs for event exploration

Twitinfo: aggregating and visualizing microblogs for event exploration

Chi '11

By:
Adam Marcus, Michael Bernstein, Osama Badar, David Karger, Samuel Madden, and Robert Miller.

•  Adam Marcus is currently a graduate student at MIT in the CS and AI department.
• Michael Bernstein is currently a graduate student at MIT in the CS and AI department concentrating on HCI.
• Osama Badar is a member of the CS and AI department at MIT.
• David Karger is a member of the CS and AI department at MIT as a EECS student.
• Samuel Madden is an associate professor at MIT in the EECS department.
• Robert Miller is an associate professor at MIT in the EECS department and is currently leading the User Interface Design group.

Summary
Hypothesis
The purpose of Twitinfo is to analyse twitter data and draw conclusions based upon this analysis. It also has a feature to summarise tweets based upon search or events.

Methods
All testing done to Twitinfo was to test its user interface and thus its usability. 12 participants were asked to search twitter using Twitinfo and research different recent events. The 2nd test involved a similar search with a time limit. After the test the users were interviewed for their reaction to using Twitinfo in the two sessions.

Results
Most participants were able to research topics thoroughly when they didn't have a time limit. They explored all tweets, related links and use the map to learn more. The introduction of the time limit resulted in a hastier research involving more skimming and certainly less use of advanced features. Tweets were used more to confirm previous information as opposed to garnering new information and thus resulted in slightly less thorough research.

Contents
Most of this article concentrates on the specifics of how Twitinfo works, its relation to database and user interfaces and its particular implementation. User testing is also described along with potential uses and identifying key trends in recent times on twitter.

Discussion
I find this paper to be extremely academic in nature and certainly see very little real world application for Twitinfo. While it may be some what useful for sentiment analysis and be used to garner some broad understanding of public opinion it isn't the most useful nor accurate tool for serious polling for any advertising or political purposes.