One of the big requests we’ve had from users of Ushahidi products is “What if I don’t know what feeds or sources to follow?” Whether it’s from humanitarian groups or corporates, some organizations have the cold-start problem of not knowing who to to listen regarding specific subjects.

Alongside the next release of the SwiftRiver platform we’re releasing a new application called SwiftMeme, our source discovery and meme tracking application.

SwiftMeme early mockup

What is SwiftMeme?

SwiftMeme is an open source topic/keyword monitoring tool. It combines elements of Ushahidi with elements of SwiftRiver to discover content, and allow users to sort that content by location and relevance.

SwiftMeme mines news, websites, blogs, multimedia sites, and other social media like Twitter, to help surface mentions of the subjects relevant to journalists, researchers, humanitarian response organizations, PR professionals, or publishers.

Simply enter a few keywords about a specific subject or event and SwiftMeme begins recommending content and feeds to follow. For some it can perform as a buzz monitoring tool, others will use it as a meme tracker, while others will use it to identify authoritative sources on a subject. It works by crawling the web and social networks like Twitter for mentions of the terms the user wishes to track. Users can then apply a number smart filters and plugins to sort and curate results.

Like all Ushahidi products, it’s designed to integrate seamlessly with our other products: Ushahidi, Crowdmap, and Sweeper. SwiftMeme will be available as both a download and hosted product in November.