iWitness web app enables new way of exploring and understanding social media
Adaptive Path, a pioneering user experience design consultancy, announced today the release of iWitness, a free web application that enables people to explore content from social media services by time and place.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (PRWEB) June 12, 2012
iWitness uses geolocation data shared by users to pinpoint the location where a post, photo, or video originated. iWitness allows you to see content from a particular location in real time or by specifying a time range.
iWitness was one of the winners of the 2011 Knight News Challenge, an open competition awarding grant funding for innovative new media and information projects held annually by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Although Adaptive Path designed iWitness to be easy enough for anyone to use, it includes features to make it simpler for journalists to incorporate social media content into their coverage of news events. While in development, iWitness was tested in five news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
"iWitness could be one of the most important tools during a breaking news event. Newsrooms are always turning to Twitter to find initial reports from the scene of breaking news and iWitness lets you find those key tweets and photos," said Sona Patel, social media producer for The Seattle Times.
The initial release of iWitness was built in partnership with New Context, a lean software consultancy. The app is being released as open source code so that it can be modified and extended by others to support additional services in the future, such as Facebook. This initial release aggregates content from Twitter and Flickr. iWitness can be found at iwitness.adaptivepath.com.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.