During the Olympics, positive and negative feedback to the games on social media will be reflected by the lighting on the London Eye, a famous giant wheel in the city.
The London Eye will be lit up each night in relation to the degree of positive or negative feedback to the event on Twitter that day, in the world’s first ever social media-driven light show.
The London Eye will be used as a gauge to show how popular the event is during the course of the games, the
EDF energy, which sponsors the wheel, will be analysing comments on the website to determine how positive people are feeling about the Olympics.
If the reaction is mixed, the London Eye will only be half lit. Whereas if the nation’s opinion is 75 per cent positive, three quarters of the wheel will light up.
The 24 minute show will start each night of the games at 9 pm (local time) with every minute of the display representing one hour, giving a 24-hour light representation of the nation’s feeling towards the games.
The light show will also include displays of the Union Flag and gold, silver or bronze lighting, depending on the colour of the medals Team Britain wins.
Twitter users are being encouraged to give their feedback to the games by tweeting ‘#energy2012.’
The light show was launched by Mr Daley Thompson, who won gold in the decathlon at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics in Moscow and Los Angeles, who said it means a lot for athletes to know their country is supporting them.
“Hosting the Games in London is an incredible once in a lifetime event and as a passionate supporter of the Games I want everyone to get behind the athletes and really show their support,” he said.
Mr Justin Manor, founder of the Sosolimited who developed the technology for the light show, said, “The algorithm we developed converts real-time social emotions into colour and motion, tweets to light show.”
“We distill 24 hours of action into a 24 minute visual concert that embodies the emotional peaks and troughs of the day,” he added.