*Originally published December 15, this story has been updated to reflect the latest statistics.*
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TORONTO – Social media posts and public forums are lighting up a 30-foot-tall, state-of-the-art Christmas tree.
Canadian Tire unveiled the tree last week at Toronto’s Union Station. The 3,000 LED lights wrapped around it are powered by “positive Christmas spirit” messages.
Using Sysomos, a social media monitoring tool, Christmas keywords in blog posts, tweets, and public Facebook messages are transformed and transmitted to the lights on the tree, making it the first tree powered by the Christmas spirit.
To date, almost 146,000 mentions of ‘Christmas spirit’ have been captured across Canada.
Some of the most popular trigger keywords are Santa, holiday, snow, time, day, gift and year, followed by season, merry, love, present and family.
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According to christmastspirittree.ca, the colour index is as follows:
· White lights = social networks
· Red lights = blogs and forums
· Blue lights = messages from ChristmasSpiritTree.ca
· Green lights = news
The more messages sent in a given minute, the brighter the tree.
Since tracking began on December 1, 68 per cent of ‘spirit messages’ have come from Twitter, 11 per cent from news, 2.5 per cent from forums, 9.5 per cent on blogs and 8 per cent from Facebook.
Half of the mentions are from Ontario, followed by 18 per cent from British Columbia, 10 per cent from Alberta and 11 per cent from Quebec.
The Christmas Spirit Tree will be on display at Toronto’s Union Station from December 12 to 26.
Live stream video: Canadian Tire Christmas Spirit Tree at Toronto’s Union Station
Video: Making of the Canadian Tire Christmas Spirit Tree
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