  In this work, we study how Twitter can be used as a sensor to detect frequent
and diverse social and physical events in real-time. We devise efficient data
collection and event recognition solutions that work despite various limits on
free access to Twitter data. We describe a web service implementation of our
solution and report our experience with the 2010-2011 US National Football
League (NFL) games. The service was able to recognize NFL game events within 40
seconds and with accuracy up to 90%. This capability will be very useful for
not only real-time electronic program guide for live broadcast programs but
also refined auction of advertisement slots. More importantly, it demonstrates
for the first time the feasibility of using Twitter for real-time social and
physical event detection for ubiquitous computing.
