Honestly, I don’t know much beyond what’s in the article. It appears to just be a computer science project by the 4 students, but it’s so promising indeed that I’m sure it’ll get funding soon. My guess, though, is that it will most likely be free because its target, after all, is the average “end user” — and most web users aren’t used to paying for this kind of content, as we can see in Swivel, Many Eyes, Quantcast, Google Trends, etc.

Although I do see a viable “premium” paid extension as a tool for marketers to keep track of buzz about their brand as it evolves across the web over time — that would actually be pretty cool.