I’m giving a talk this Friday (September 26, from 6 – 8 PM) on my current research into interest detection on Twitter. The talk is sponsored by the NY Chapter of the IEEE Systems, Man, Cybernetics Society and is at at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, Room HS 118. (Directions)

Abstract

This talk introduces graph analysis and how it can be used to infer a Twitter user’s interests. Activities such as marketing, promotion, and outreach all require a level of intimacy with an individual’s interests to make a lasting, positive impression. Few organizations have the resources to achieve personalized service and often have to rely on lower resolution demographic data coupled with surveys. Social media data heralds a new era of personalization, where any organization can access an individual’s interests.

Model API

One of my goals for the talk is to solicit feedback on a model API that queries user interests directly. Essentially, the API will give you the same data that is available at Me Meme but in raw JSON. I’m working on a client library in R that would connect directly to the API. The primary use case I’m thinking of is extracting the interests of users that engaged with a particular hashtag.

I’ll be writing more about this idea after I give the talk. Any thoughts/comments are welcome.