What we do: #realtime is a visual search engine. Our goal was to give people access to #realtime buzz on topics they care about. We were inspired by how social media is driven by trending news and the possibility for an optimized search engine that recommends articles based on trends. Regular search engines only give information with a direct link to the input - we focused on connecting people to peripheral, yet equally important topics.
The Twitter REST API is used to gather tweets associated with a user's hashtag of preference. We then aggregate all the other hashtags used in these tweets and present a visualization of these hashtags based on their frequency (and therefore relevance). The user can then click on the visual to search Twitter for the different phrases, thus finding relevant, trending news. They are exposed to information they care about, but might not know about.
We’re proud of accomplishing this project within the given time frame, especially considering this was our first hackathon. We learned a lot about web development, data visualization and leveraging APIs. Our next goal is to expand #realtime to synthesize data from multiple social media sources. Eventually, it will be one of the most comprehensive and diverse places to explore trends and topics you care about.
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