Twitter has compiled a series of maps showing geo-located Tweet volumes since 2009. The resulting maps are intricate, gorgeous — and even a bit revealing.
According to Miguel Rios, Twitter's Visual Insights Manager, billions of tweets were used to put these maps together. Every dot is a tweet, and the colors represent tweet volume.
What's particularly fascinating is how the coastlines and transportation conduits — including those on the ocean — are so clearly demarcated. It's also interesting to see those regions that are either low density, inaccessible — or even off the grid. There may also be selectional effects at play here as the maps were compiled exclusively from geotags; population density does not necessarily correlate to tweet density. Nor is twitter used to the same degree in different parts of the world.
Europe
North America
San Francisco
New York City
Tokyo
Seattle
Boston
Moscow
Seoul
More at Twitter's Flickr site.