Case Studies

Smesh-powered Huffington Post UK launch event

Smesh was both chuffed AND thrilled to provide its Twitter commentary software running on a cinema-screen scale for the Huffington Post’s UK launch event on the 6th of July, 2011.

Held at the Curzon cinema in Millbank Tower, the invite-only event featured a panel debate including Richard Bacon, Arianna Huffington, Alistair Campbell, Celia Walden, Kelly Osbourne, Shami Chakrabarti and Jon Gaunt.

Smesh’s software filled the cinema screen behind the panelists, showing a flow of tweets submitted by the very enthusiastic audience, many of whom competed to get their tweets promoted to the ‘hero’ spot in the centre of the screen.

Highlights of the Twitter wall in action.

Blogger A Modern Mother observed “It was very Question Time confrontational, and sort of entertaining, but the highlight was the cool Twitter stream that was projected on the big screen behind the panel.”

moderator crew

Smesh’s Tweet-wall running on the beautiful hi-def cinema screen during testing.
The Tweet-wall during the event, from the moderation gallery.
Photo by The Media Blog [1] who said “Here’s a photo taken at last night’s Huffington Post launch event, where the Twitterwall was undoubtedly the star of the panel debate”

Smesh provided a fully-featured moderation system. With the help of some expert human operators, this shaped the flow of online commentary and thankfully bested some very creative attempts to circumvent profanity requirements[2].

Credits: Flash design and build work by Sennep; creative direction and management by Poke.

[1] http://themediablog.typepad.com/the-media-blog/2011/07/twitterwall-huffington-post.html

[2] Tip o’ the hat to Mr Michael Hunt