Through Twitter, MIT Alums Help Determine Empire’s State of Mind

Denver Broncos colors.

The two weeks of hype surrounding the NFL Super Bowl on Feb. 2 can be summarized in one question: Who’s going to win?

Most attempts to answer that question generally end in argument. But an MIT alumni-founded art studio is part of a team taking a more visual approach: a Twitter-powered light show on the Empire State Building.

In a five-night campaign that began on Jan. 27, one Super Bowl question is posed daily on Twitter from Verizon Wireless (who created the campaign in partnership with the Empire State Building) using the hashtag #WhosGonnaWin. The conversations on Twitter are monitored throughout the day.

At 6 p.m. EST, the building’s colors begin to rapidly change, depending on which fanbase is most raucously tweeting its support. At 7 p.m., based on that day’s final tally, the building is lit up in the colors of one of the game’s two teams, the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks.

The visual sentiment was designed by Sosolimited, an art and technology studio—cofounded by Justin Manor ’00, SM ’03; John Rothenberg ’02, SM ’07; and Eric Gunther ’00, MNG ’02—that created an algorithm that monitors fan support on Twitter.

“Tweets determine whether Empire State Building displays Broncos or Seahawks colors,” New York Times:

Here’s the game plan: By using the hashtag #WhosGonnaWin, fans of the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks post their predictions, which are tracked via an algorithm created by a team of MIT graduates.

During all the back and forth tweeting and tabulating, “the building will look like it’s alive,” Empire State Building lighting designer Marc Brickman said. “It will look as if it is literally breathing colors — it’s going to be a real rush.”

Sosolimited’s algorithm will also be used during the Super Bowl, as fan predictions on Twitter will be projected during halftime of the championship game.

The MIT-founded studio has experience gauging emotions around massive sporting events. During the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the group programmed the London Eye, the city’s famous Ferris wheel, to light up based on how people commented about the Games on Twitter. The project, called Energy of the Nation, used a complicated algorithm that linguistically analyzed tweets related to the Games and ranked the sentiments as positive or negative.