London Eye Olympic Twitter positivity lightshow launched

Legendary athlete Daley Thompson has launched a lightshow on the London Eye which will be driven by Twitter users' enthusiasm for the Olympics.

The ferris wheel landmark will be lit up each night of the Games in relation to positive or negative London 2012 comments on the social networking site.

EDF Energy, which sponsors the wheel, said it was the world's first social media-driven lightshow.

The show will start at 21:00 BST each day of the Olympics and Paralympics.

People are being encouraged to tweet their thoughts on London 2012 using #Energy2012.

Experts on "sentiment analysis" developed an intuitive algorithm for the effect, said EDF Energy.

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

If, for example, the nation's energy is 75% positive, three quarters of the wheel will light up.

Each night, the top sporting moments of the day will be projected using different coloured lights.

Thompson, who won gold in the decathlon at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics in Moscow and Los Angeles, said he knew what it meant to know the whole nation was behind you.

He said: "We want to make the EDF Energy London Eye a spectacular showcase of national support for the athletes - and one that will inspire them every night of the Games."