Buzz.com grew out of earlier InfoLab research by Sara Owsley
Sara Owsley SoodChookaszian Family Teaching Professor of computer science at Northwestern and founding director of its undergraduate AI major. Her research is on emotion and sentiment in online communication.Northwestern ↗: finding the compelling personal stories in blogs automatically and having virtual characters perform them. That research prototype was published as Buzz at ACM Multimedia in 2006. The AT&T product that followed was a separate build on that research, and I worked on the team that built its web application. It shipped in December 2007, and AT&T opened it to the public in 2008.
What it did
Buzz.com gathered the hot topics of the day and what bloggers were saying about them, in categories across the top: technology, sports, celebrity, and the rest. Each topic had a news summary, then the blogs sorted two ways, "Blogs that Make a Point" and "Blogs that Make You Feel," and a place to leave a comment.
Each story also had a buzzcast. Click the buzz icon and a 3D character performed the story aloud, by speech synthesis, while you read on or did something else. The characters were designed by Chicago 3D artist Mike KashMKMike KashSenior 3D artist with twenty years in advertising, film, and games; a VES Award winner for visual effects in a commercial.LinkedIn ↗.
