Mapping Twitter’s #UKSnow Traffic

Those on Twit­ter fol­low­ing friends (or strangers) from the UK may have recently seen a flurry of ‘tweets’ tagged with the #UKSnow hash­tag. As expected, a use for the abun­dant data soon arose:

• Real-time map of #UKSnow: This real-time map of #UKSnow tweets has gained a lot of media atten­tion in the UK. Updated every minute.
• Google Earth #UKSnow time­line ani­ma­tion: The Google Earth Visu­al­iza­tion blog cre­ated this ani­ma­tion map­ping all #UKSnow tweets over time onto a Google Earth map.

I’m unsure of the prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits of such appli­ca­tions but it’s inter­est­ing nonethe­less to see the power of the com­mu­nity mapped so vividly.

(The new Lone Gun­man Twit­ter account pro­vides updates on posts and ser­vice. There’s also my per­sonal Twit­ter account.)