I keep an eye on my friend’s Facebook status updates, it’s a little odd at times but it’s amusing in it’s own quirky little way.
The whole one-liner, no extra info, is a bit confusing sometimes “Someone is glum.” or “Someone else had a close shave.”. WTF? Stop being all mysterious and stick a ‘because’ or something on the end of that.
The coincidences are particularly perplexing, like when two people, who have nothing in common and don’t know each other, reference the same Greek myth within days.
If I’ve been off-line for a bit and I read a few days worth at once it gives a good overview of what people have been doing or where they’ve been. Although having separate location updates would be cool for the frequent travellers, but not everyone wants to be found …
All of this, and the popularity of mini-blogs like Twitter, got me wondering about the possibilities of sorting through all this information.
If you examine an anonymised feed of status updates could you extract something useful, could you guess the mood of a nation? the world? Could you examine the Blue Monday equation? (hint: it’s bullshit).
News services are already starting to monitor these things to cover breaking news, but I wonder if they can be used predictively.
Perhaps the next big thing is sifting through all the little status updates and tweets and pulling something useful out of it.
Maybe it’s already being done.