The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is inviting firms to bid for the chance to build a system to monitor what people say about it on social media sites.
In a request for proposal (RFP) document first picked up by ZeroHedge, the bank asks vendors to come up with a "sentiment analysis and social media monitoring solution".
The FRBNY wants to "establish a fair and equitable partnership with a market leader who will who (sic) gather data from various social media outlets and news sources and provide applicable reporting" as part of the organisation's "social media listening platforms initiative".
The RFP says the system needs to be able to gather data from major social media platforms - Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums and YouTube - and aggregate information from media outlets such as CNN and the Wall Street Journal.
The technology must be capable of real-time monitoring of relevant conversations and providing sentiment analysis for key conversational topics. It also needs to integrate with existing FRBNY technologies such as Google Search appliance, Lotus notes suite and web trends.
Any sentiment analysis carried out on reaction to the plans would provide an unambiguous result, with blog ZeroHedge managing to invoke Big Brother and Watergate in its headline alone.
Read the full document, posted by public intelligence, here.