London Eye Olympic light show gets under way with social media spark

One of London's most historic landmarks will be lit up throughout every day of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The city's London Eye lightshow will measure the nation's excitement for the Games through social media.

Video courtesy from EDF Energy.

London 2012-related tweets on Twitter will gage Britain's mood during the Games and determine which colours and sequences travel round the London Eye's circular structure.

Real-time social media tracking devices splits the tweets into positive and negative conversations and filters them through a programme, which systematically converts them into a lightshow.

Double Olympic gold medallist Daley Thompson launched the first EDF Energy lightshow, which was created by a group of graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the world’s leading science and technology Institutions.