WASHINGTON — Social media is great for lots of things: Keeping in touch with friends, spying on exes and lighting Christmas trees.
Power is generated for a 30-foot pine in Toronto’s Union Station by taking positive Christmas comments from social networks like Twitter and Facebook and using the data to spark 30,000 LED lights.
Sheldon Levine of Sysomos, the Toronto-based analytics company behind the project, explains:
“Each color of light represents Christmas spirit coming from a different social channel. White lights represent social networks like Twitter and public Facebook statuses, red for blog and forum posts, green for online news and blue lights for messages sent through text [directly to] ChristmasSpiritTree.ca. The more social media spirit that comes in at one time the brighter the tree shines.”
Watch a livestream of the tree: