WordLo

Twitter and other social media are an immense resource that can offer linguists the opportunity to explore how our words and phrases are changing.

More and more researchers are beginning to work on projects consisting in analysing tweets to catch the next most popular word.


Why Twitter?

Because its data is public and immediately available. A huge data consisting of around 340 million tweets sent every day, according to Twitter.

Twitter offers records of language mutating in real time and space. Many tweets provide location data and the time they were sent allowing thus to map out the way in which new words become popular and spread.

Because tweets tend to be rather informal, there are a lot of types of creative usages of words. Tweets appear similar to spontaneous speech, making them particularly valuable to the study of the spread of new words and expressions.

Sources: 
Linguistic researchers begin hunt for the next 'selfie'Using social media to find English lexical blends, By P. …

Sharing terminology can only bring more benefits. It helps improving consistency, uniformity and reliability of data. 
The sharing of existing terminological data helps  translators, terminologists, researchers (but I would not exclude students, journalists, web writers  and whoever works with knowledge) to use the right terms even without being experts and preventing them from spending too much time looking for resources, extracting terms and checking their reliability.
Here a list of my favourite resources:
TAUS Data: a cloud platform based on shared translation memories. I use almost every day TAUS Data for technical translations and thank to it I can choose the right term by checking the context (always reliable) and being sure I have selected the right term even without being an expert on the particular subject.
Taas - Cloud Services for Terminology Work: New look for this cloud based portal providing multilingual and collaborative terminology services. Beta version for now, flat des…

Words For That is a versatile site mirroring the versatile nature of language. It can be used in a number of different ways: A tip-of-the-tongue-eliminator, an informal reverse-dictionary, laugh at funny definitions or "scenarios".



Background
Words For That was created as platform for pointing out and having fun with well-known situations which have never earned a name of their own. These "scenarios" can be anything - a feeling, a circumstance, a type of person, a coincidence. Anything where you've thought, "there should be a word for that!" Visitors can vote on each Scenario based on how well it rings a bell, or makes them laugh, or whatever. The best Scenarios are those where everyone can say "I know exactly what you mean!"

Scenarios are submitted and voted on by the site visitors. For each of these Scenarios, "words" can be submitted. These Words can be anything as well - a single word, a phrase, a clever pun, or an etymological …

The world of technology is shaping the English language, with innovative advances reflected in new terms. Of course the explosion of social media has accelerated the creation of new words as different cultures and languages interact.

Seeking neologisms is becoming harder and the risk of getting lost in information overload (or infoxication) is high! Wordphiles just need to develop strategies not to get lost.

Here some useful tips:

Twitter: Following someone on Twitter, it is possible to see a word at the moment of its coinage. Because tweets tend to be rather informal, there are a lot of types of creative usages of words. 57% of neologisms on Twitter come from blends.
Twitter is a newswire other than a social platform. Follow the social spotlights on Twitter and new words will pop-up! (See #Frankenstorm Sandy coverage, for example). To improve your search you can use the real-time social media search and visual discovery tools such as SeeSaw).

Don't know who to start following? Here…