This 100-year-old tree wants to tell you about its day. The tree, an English-speaking Belgian, shares pictures, videos, audio, and comments about it's day to day life with the world via its website, twitter feed, and Facebook page. But don't try to Facebook friend it right now—the tree is already over its friend limit. The tree's also outfitted with special sensors that detect the CO2, soot and ozone levels and also acts as a weather station, detecting local rainfall and temperature fluctuations. All of this information is transmitted to software which translates it into status updates like these examples on io9:
They analyze what the tree sees and senses, then translate that into updates like "Won't be doing too much photosynthesis in this cloudy weather," and "This ozone concentration makes it difficult to do my job." It also advises people to ride their bikes on days with air pollution.
The information gathered by the tree's sensors can also be used by researchers. Check out the making of the social-media tree
video for more information on what went into the creation of this arboreal social media master. Though the tree has to deal with the ups and downs of climate change, it is still pretty chipper as based on his social media slogan:
Hello! I'm a tree, and this is my feed. I'll be online all day to keep you posted on how I feel.
Related content: Bad Astronomy: Archiving NASA’s social media
Bad Astronomy: Social media diseases
Discover Magazine: