On: Heatmap of Twitter knowledge by location (heatmap.js + Google Maps)

[IanDrake]

Neat, but on just about every topic there's a huge bias towards California, North East Coast, and England (because those are tech hubs?).

[commanda → IanDrake]

There also seems to be a contingent of knowledgeable Twitter users in a boat off the west coast of Africa. (I'm kidding - this is due to tweets where lat,lon = (0,0))

[SkyMarshal → commanda]

The Nigerian scammers are migrating to Twitter, and have taken up seasteading to avoid the authorities.

[eloisius → IanDrake]

Agreed. This would be way cooler if it took total tweet density into consideration so that it wasn't always London, NY and LA.

[answerly → eloisius]

Definitely something we've considered for a future enhancement. Our summer intern worked on this map over the last few days and we wanted to release it before he headed back to the UK later this week.

[IanDrake → answerly]

I wouldn't mind getting my hands on a summer intern who could turn that out in a few days.

[answerly → IanDrake]

James is awesome. And, we found him via Hacker News!

[city41 → IanDrake]

Try sports teams. "Broncos" creates a huge hot spot over Denver. They are a good way to validate the data/app generally works.

[morsch → city41]

Tried a few German sports teams. "Schalke" was a huge hot spot over London... huh.

[answerly → morsch]

We only include accounts that Tweet primarily (really exclusively for practical purposes) in English. So it may be that there are more English language accounts in the UK that are fans of that team than in Germany. Just a guess. I think the various data normalization and other enhancements discussed throughout this thread would also help.

[clay → IanDrake]

except the Jesus topic, because of all the godless heathens in SF and NYC