NBA Tweets Taken For Spin With Interactive Wall

August 28, 2012 by Dave Haynes

The NBA used a nice interactive social media wall to welcome fans at a pop-up facility that ran in London’s Covent Gardens during the 2012 Olympics.

The goal of NBA House was to feature the league, attract new and existing fans through the day, and also be a base for VIP and partner hospitality events.

There were a lot of things going on, but one of the centrepieces was a two by two wall of 55-inch NEC LCDs at the entry, which had a multitouch overlay of some kind. The program was pulled together by UK interactive startup Touchez.

“When Ignite asked us to create a multitouch video wall for its social media activity at NBA House we knew it was going to be a great project,” says Bart Kamp, director of Touchez. “We chose to visualise a large amount of data by using the iconic NBA basketball, which rotated like the world and around it, it would show 1,000 tweets with the avatar of each tweeter on display.”

In screensaver mode the wall would display #nba and #nbahouse tweets in real time, which encouraged visitors to tweet their own pictures on the wall again. People could also use touch to navigate and spin the ball, and open and view tweets. The application was built in Flash.

Some 53,000 people were logged coming through NBA House this summer and the NBA House Facebook page reached over one million people during the event.

Touchez Ltd just opened its doors last year and is a specialist in interactive touch technology. The company Works in close partnership with design agencies and event organizers to create tailored interactive displays for conferences, events and fixed installations.