October 6, 2010 – Trying to filter and make sense of the real-time stream of data that comes from Twitter and other social networks, new start-up Tweetbeat offers something other services can’t – four years’ worth of semantic analysis and taxonomic structure.

This was brought to our attention by gigaom.com’s article, “Tweetbeat Is Like Tivo for the Real-Time Firehose.”  The database the company has built  exceeds 10 million topics and this helps Tweetbeat filter content from the Twitter firehose, which the company got access to six months ago — just in time to use it for a trial of its filtering technology during the World Cup, which allowed users to tune into streams based on specific teams and even players.

Tweetbeat looks at the stream of tweets and does real-time semantic analysis based on the content of the messages and the authority of the people posting them, using a proprietary ranking algorithm that looks at a person’s influence within specific topic areas.

Another interesting use of semantic technology. Wonder where this wild ride will end?

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.