When I think of Twitter, "focus" isn't the word that comes to mind. A focus group seems like an artificial channel; you can't possibly hear what 100k people ar

When I think of Twitter, "focus" isn't the word that comes to mind. A focus group seems like an artificial channel; you can't possibly hear what 100k people are saying about your product, so you pick 200 and you hope it's a random sample. But you can read what 100k people are writing, with good enough algorithms, so it'll be easier to gauge the Twitter zeitgeist on topics (like the election), if there is a zeitgeist at all. Gave a thousand samples out in a city and no one comments? That might be a interesting result in and of itself.