Like its fluttery mascot, Twitter dreams of flight. The social media titan was granted a patent last week for a tweet-controlled drone, with user actions on the platform (think retweets) somehow determining the movement of the unmanned aerial vehicle. However, the drone would not be at the beck and call of one tweet-happy individual, but rather would respond to simultaneous actions by numerous users across the platform.
"UAV control may be determined through democratic means," the patent reads.
Although one presumes safety controls would prevent a mass of users from crashing the drone by tweeting about drone error, that a drone could be incited to snap pics of police action or celebrity inanity simply by the actions of inattentive tweeters is certainly interesting.
At this point, however, it's all speculation as Twitter has refused to comment other than in the form of a tweet-worthy PR morsel to CNBC.
"Two words: drone selfies."
The idea calls to mind an ongoing social experiment on the massively popular video game streaming service Twitch, wherein thousands of people simultaneously attempt to play the same game of Pokémon. However, with the stakes a little higher than a video game, expect the Federal Aviation Administration to weigh in.
The potential applications of a crowdsourced tweet-controlled drone vary widely from the delivery drones currently in development by the likes of Google and Amazon, but with Twitter remaining mum regarding its intentions it looks like we'll just have to wait and see what (if anything) the company does with it.
