Twitter investing $10 million to fund social media lab at MIT

New York -- Twitter is giving over every message ever tweeted to the data scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s famed Media Lab. The social media giant is also giving $10 million (over five years) to fund the new Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM), which will be based at the Media Lab.



The new initiative aims to build new tools that will analyze and enable communication on social platforms. Twitter will provide full access to its real-time, public stream of tweets, as well as the archive of every tweet dating back to the first.



"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," said Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter.



A main goal for the lab will be to create new platforms for both individuals and institutions to identify, discuss and act on pressing societal problems, MIT said in a statement. Though funded by Twitter, the lab will have complete operational and academic independence, according MIT, with students and staff working across many social media and mass media platforms.