Map of Twitter and Flickr users

Map Twitter Flickr
Map Twitter Flickr
Click to enlarge. Red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both. Credit: Eric Fischer

Eric Fischer has created a series of maps showing the locations of the users of Twitter and Flickr. I find this fascinating. Click on the image above to see a larger version. A high-res copy is here.

Mr. Fischer wrote a program that uses the geo-tagging features of the two services. In a comment on Flicker he wrote:

There’s not a whole lot of technology behind it. It’s a C program that runs through the photos/tweets in chronological order, plotting the earliest ones the most brightly and stepping the brightness down for points that don’t show up for the first time until later on.

The points on the maps are allowed to diffuse by a few pixels when there is an additional record for a point that is already plotted, with the brightness falling off exponentially as the point that is actually plotted gets further from its intended location.

Mr. Fischer also created zoomed-in maps of several dozen cities around the world. Here is one example — New York.

Map Twitter Flickr New York
New York. Red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both. Credit: Eric Fischer

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Author: Bill Gabbert

After working full time in wildland fire for 33 years, he continues to learn, and strives to be a Student of Fire.

One thought on “Map of Twitter and Flickr users”

  1. I too find these kind of maps fascinating. Some things of special interest to me is how the areas of charismatic landscape show up very well. You can track I-90 from Sioux Falls across SD and then there is that cluster of twitter pictures at the Bad Lands and then another at the Black Hills. North of there in NW SD, NE WY and E MT is one of the larger areas of lowest density of Twitter activity. Lake Superior is outline very well.

    An oddity is the relatively heavy picture activity in Red River valley Between Fargo and Winnipeg. I figure this was people taking pictures of this spring and summers floods. Lots of photo activity north of Bismarck ND. Most likely photos of the spillway at Garrison dam from back in June.

    Disappointing to see that a large part of the BWCA can be twittered from as well as how distinct Isle Royal NP shows up. But Quetico still has limited twitter capability.

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