Mobile rating site Thummit analyzes Twitter to rate Super Bowl ads

[Disclosure: The author’s own startup has been mentored by another Sean Greene company, Launchbox Digital.]

Mobile rating service Thummit is launching an app for the Super Bowl today. Thummit allows users to rate “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” for different restaurants they’ve eaten at, both via Twitter by tweeting to “@thummit” and directly through Thummit. The new Super Bowl app will synthesize real-time Twitter data on reactions to Super Bowl ads.

Thummit co-founder Sean Greene explains that “the basic idea is we’re keeping score of the ads in real time by 1) aggregating/filtering Twitter updates relevant to Super Bowl ads, 2) analyzing sentiments to see which updates are positive (thumbs-up) and negative (thumbs-down) and 3) ranking the ads based on most popular and least popular.”

Greene, who previously sold his startup Away.com to Orbitz, had planned for restaurants to be a launching pad into different verticals. As a test case, Thummit launched Inaugurate09 for party goers to rate the different events and balls held in Washington, DC in the days leading up to, and after, President Obama’s inauguration.

After the Super Bowl, as after the inauguration, Thummit will release a widget with the results — both the top and bottom 10 — which can then be embedded around the web. You can see and rate the ads real-time during the Super Bowl at http://rate.thummit.com/.

Greene, by the way, is also co-founder of Launchbox Digital, a service that helps new businesses get off the ground (including my own startup).