Microsoft dabbles in more Twitter research with AskyBot

There's a new bot in Twitter town: The AskyBot.

Asky seems to be related to a new Microsoft Research project from the FuSE Labs team.

On its Twitter profile, AskyBot is self-described as being "curious about how people find answers on Twitter." The bot profile also says that AskyBot is "part of a Microsoft Research project" by a handful of researchers working at Microsoft and with connections outside the company. Askybot's first and only tweet (so far) was posted on July 25.

It says: "Although I am a bot, I tweet with love and I hope not to bother people."

On the Microsoft Research page, AskyBot is described as being part of a project about "(u)nderstanding people's motivations and satisfaction when they ask questions using Twitter hashtags."

On July 31, Microsoft updated the AskyBot profile page to say:

The rules associated with our study's prize sweepstakes are available here (coming soon).

You can find AskyBot on Twitter at https://twitter.com/askybot. The tweets from @askybot are not spam; they are part of our research team's data collection effort.

If you have any questions or concerns about this study, you can contact us at askybot@microsoft.com.

I asked Microsoft Research for more information about the project(s) with which Askybot is affiliated. I received the following response from a spokesperson:

"This is actually a very common vehicle they use to gather data for social science research. (Askybot) is not a project, but simply a Twitter bot that gathers data for research projects. At this point, they just started their data gathering for a research project."

Microsoft Research has a number of research projects around social media. Microsoft Research's NeXus team, in particular, is doing a lot of work in this space. Microsoft Researchers have been looking into mood detection using Twitter hashtags. Researchers also recently have been looking into "friend-sourcing" answers to questions via Twitter.?

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-dabbles-in-more-twitter-research-with-askybot-7000018818/

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