Whenever someone needs to cite an example of the staggering volume of data generation today, Twitter is called upon. It’s no wonder this is the case- every single minute, 649 new users sign up to the service, and an astonishing 342,000 tweets are created. Handling this vast ocean of data- which includes not only text, but also hashtags, mentions, videos, links and images- is a daunting task to say the least.
This is where Jake Mannix comes in. The former principal software engineer for LinkedIn, Mannix joined Twitter as an Applied Machine Learning Engineer for Twitter back in 2010. We recently caught up with Mannix to discuss his work with two of the biggest social media networks in the world, as well as how Twitter uses data to identify influencers and interests, and his thoughts on the how machine learning will shape our futures.
(Image credit: Mykl Roventine)