Twitter was given a new platform when the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opened its doors in Las Vegas yesterday, welcoming visitors with a huge MultiTouch “twitter wallâ€. Six MultiTouch Cell 46†Advanced displays show tweets from selected CES related hashtags and can be resized and manipulated by visitors. The wall is supported with Panphonics Sound Shower directional loudspeakers.
Tweets are represented with rotating spheres and can opened by touch. Photos are also displayed via Flickr and sound accompanies tweets with positional audio provided by Panphonics.
The wall is housed in the North Hall lobby of the Las Vegas Convention Centre.
MultiTouch says its Twitter Wall “pools together and visualises the ‘buzz’ of an event” and describes it as a “real-time collaboration platform”. However, critics argue that functionality is limited and users are restricted in how much power they actually have over the content on the screen.
Interactivity gripes aside, reports suggest that the wall is a powerful large-scale display tool for Twitter.
“Our system enabled customers to complement their own application suites, and we expect to see further developments along the social media multitouch front going forward,” said Hannu Anttila, vice president of sales for MultiTouch.