Heatmaps for Twitter
January 26th, 2009 by Chris Mueller
Today we are announcing the release of a new version of The Word on the Tweet, our Twitter/map mashup. With this version, we are generating heatmaps (or density maps) of words as they are tweeted around the globe.
For example, here are maps for the words “love” and “hate”:
Tweets containing the word "love"
Tweets containing the word "hate"
Note that the maps generated using this service are based on a sampling of the Twitter public timeline, which itself is a sample of all Twitter traffic. The data is not up-to-the second in accuracy, but will reflect the general trend over the past several weeks. Some words or brands that are more uncommon may not be available yet.
Double-clicking on a location brings up a word cloud and a selection of the most recent tweets from that location:
Word Cloud and Recent Tweets for Washington, DC
There are many fascinating patterns to be discovered. Pan the map, zoom, search in multiple languages. Enjoy!
PS: the original version of the Word on the Tweet is still available.