A recent article in London newspaper Metro showcased an interesting Twitter project, The Twitter Map, which maps cities based on the levels of tweets being sent in those locations and uses traditional contour mapping to display the information. The map of London (pictured), shows how ‘areas of the capital are renamed in the map to correspond with their traffic levels, ranging from Soho Mountain and Peckham Crag to Gherkin Point and the Wembley Plains’ (Metro.co.uk).
The Twitter Map has evolved from Tweet-o-Meter, a creation which documents Twitter traffic from different cities around the world, and is a project from UCL’s CASA (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis), foremost by Fabian Neuhaus and Steven Gray.
This work maps the online world with the geographic world by collecting data sourced from tweets sent via mobile devices which include the location at the time the messages are sent. It beautifully builds a bridge between these parallels and there’s something special about relating all the information flying around above our heads back to a real person, time and place particularly in a society which is ever more using digital communication.
A great demonstration of how the take-up/use of Twitter differs. I guess I’m not surprised at Soho Mountain being one of the peak areas, particularly as there is a hub of marketing and creative agencies around there.
It’s refreshing to see the virtual world tied back to the physical, in a similar way to the snow map that was produced earlier this year with Brits across the country tweeting their snow levels which was then translated to a real-time weather map.