Twitter, Flickr, and urban civilization

The Daily Mail reports on an interesting imaging project that shows the extent to which Twitter and Flickr are impacting modern society. Here's an extract, along with a couple of pictures (reduced in size to fit this blog).

At first glance, this image seems to show how light pollution blights Britain’s capital.

But this is no satellite photo from space. Instead, it is a map that reveals how keen Londoners are on social networking.

Created by Eric Fischer, it combines data from the photo-sharing website Flickr and the micro-messaging network Twitter favoured by celebrities.




The red dots represent Flickr pictures while the blue dots are tweets. The white dots seen in central London are locations that have been posted to both.

The map reveals Twitter is used across the metropolis of eight million people, while geo-tagged Flickr snaps are clustered south of the Thames, the river that is often seen as a cultural divide in the city.

The meandering river itself is mostly red, indicating the increased number of tourists taking photos and then uploading them to Flickr.

Mr Fischer has applied his magic to other big cities, including New York, Barcelona and Tokyo – as well as the entire globe.

. . .

Within North America, the brightest parts are at the coasts and the Tweeter and Flickr usage becomes less the more one travels into the heart of the U.S. and north of the southern strip of Canada.




Europe is surrounded by almost complete darkness at its edge.

There's more at the link, including many more (and larger) photographs. Interesting reading.

Peter