University of Mississippi to monitor building automation and energy usage via social media.

If you haven't established an account on Twitter or Facebook yet, consider yourself seriously behind the times – because pretty soon even buildings are going to have their own online lists of friends, followers, subscribers and tweeters.

The University of Mississippi, working together with SmartSynch, is developing the ability to monitor energy usage and lower campus power consumption by linking its building automation tools with its social media networks. According to SmartSynch News, the university will be able to monitor, analyze and report on energy utilization among its campus buildings in real time via social networking websites. Using Facebook, Twitter and RSS, UM will establish separate social media profiles for specific buildings on its campus, and then provide anyone linked to those profiles with regular updates on the buildings' energy usage.

That's a pretty nifty marriage of building automation tools and the innovations of online communities – but hopefully there will be some human interaction involved as well so that we can prevent the internet's first instance of a Facebook friend getting Rickrolled by a building.

(via Diversified Automation)

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