We know what you’re thinking. Smoking Gun PR is a social media loving public relations firm, and therefore would tweet until the cows come home on the benefits of the platform. But it seems this time someone has done the job for us.
Reading Media Guardian on a daily basis regularly provides us with a good lunchtime talking point here on Mount Street. And, although we may also have the small distraction of a local election, and that impending decision whether or not to change the way we vote, there’s more on our minds than politics this May 5th. Namely Twitter, and Kazemill.
Known for it’s technological superiority, Japan is exactly the place you would expect to pilot a service that charts the spread of disease via 140-character statements. And that’s what’s happening. So when 18,000 individual mentions were made in one day about a cough, sneeze, sore throat, or similar condition the software used an algorithm to colour code the symptoms, before overlaying the results on a map of the country, plotting the spread of bacteria.
McCann Healthcare Worldwide and the Tokyo University’s Centre for Knowledge Structuring both had a hand in developing the project, and it’s hoped the programme will be rolled out worldwide next year. After that there are plans to create a weather-report style warning service that could see us all receive information on what we’re most likely to catch during each and every season. It sounds like science fiction, but Kazemill is solid fact, and shows the list of social media’s uses continues to grow.
