

Interactive Twitter Visualization: Election 2012 (made with d3.js) - huangm
http://hotspots.io/election

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jfager
This looks great. One thing that's a little annoying is how the vertical axis
automatically scales to the range of the data. It makes it hard to compare
peaks that don't occur within the same view range.

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mbostock
The aspect ratio is also problematic with taller windows; best practice is to
bank to 45º:

<http://vis.berkeley.edu/papers/banking/>

It's hard to pick the right aspect ratio without knowing the data beforehand,
but you could make some reasonable assumptions about how spiky the peaks are.
Given those assumptions, you could choose a fixed-height (say, 400px), and
then adjust the visible time range if you still want variable-width. This
would allow the chart to increase in size without compromising the aspect
ratio.

Alternatively, you could use a responsive layout and just choose between two
or three fixed sizes.

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huangm
Thanks for the suggestions - it's certainly an issue we're thinking about and
looking to improve.

Also, d3.js is a pleasure to work with. Really appreciate all the work you've
put into it.

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quasistar
Very slick UX and very informative as well! I would love to be able to create
custom topics, such as 'D3.JS' and generate timelines with top tweets.

Quick question: how did you obtain the real-time metric "# of tweets per
hour"? Are you sampling to determine an estimate using the Search API, or do
you have access to a proverbial "firehose"?

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huangm
We're actually using the Twitter Streaming API, which has pretty high limits
even with access levels lower than the full firehose.

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joshma
Really cool, any plans to add other data sources? FB might be harder, but I
think G+ has a public search API. I see it's just a demo for now, but a
dashboard view would be great as that "go-to source" for top breaking news.

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minikomi
If you can, please do the same for Wikipedia / SOPA.. it'll be interesting to
see the difference in volume between tech media reporting and general outcry..

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jmjerlecki
This would be great as a map and if people tweeted a certain hashtag, color
the map according to their vote. You could really see what direction the
twitter audience is leaning. this is a neat implementation though.

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djb_hackernews
Looks real nice, but the information is pretty useless.

* When events unfold, twitter users predictably react.

* Some events are bigger than others.

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callil
Yes, but how much bigger? whose getting the attention? that is what's
interesting about this visualization.

