Twitter invests $10M in MIT Media Lab program to fund new discussion platforms

Today the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab announced a new program, the “Laboratory for Social Machines,” which aims to build new tools that analyze and enable communication on social platforms like Twitter. Interestingly, Twitter is funding the entire experiment with a massive $10 million investment.

In a vague press release, MIT details that the program will “focus on the development of new technologies to make sense of semantic and social patterns across the broad span of public mass media, social media, data streams, and digital content.” The goal, according to MIT, is to “create new platforms for both individuals and institutions to identify, discuss, and act on pressing societal problems.”

MIT details that it won’t just focus on Twitter, but the organization says it plans to take advantage of Twitter’s real-time Gnip-powered tweet stream and archive.

According to Twitter chief Dick Costolo, “With this investment, Twitter is seizing the opportunity to go deeper into research to understand the role Twitter and other platforms play in the way people communicate, the effect that rapid and fluid communication can have and apply those findings to complex societal issues.”