North American detail map of Flickr and Twitter locations

Comments and faves

1. ★

   a blackbird, Paul Hammond, Pie_r_squared, davidfg, and 404 other people added this photo to their favorites.

2. 

   patrickjanelle (23 months ago | reply)

   This is great. I love that people tweet/flickr their road trips along the main arteries.

3. 

   michal migurski (23 months ago | reply)

   You're a deputy editor at the Times?

4. 

   Eric Fischer (23 months ago | reply)

   No, I'm not! I think they got that because David Gallagher linked to this, and he is one. I'm also not much of a photographer, really.

5. 

   mikelovesrobots (23 months ago | reply)

   What technology did you use to render this map? It's really gorgeous.

6. 

   Eric Fischer (23 months ago | reply)

   Thanks! There's not a whole lot of technology behind it. It's a C program that runs through the photos/tweets in chronological order, plotting the earliest ones the most brightly and stepping the brightness down for points that don't show up for the first time until later on. Points are also allowed to diffuse by a few pixels when there is an additional record for a point that is already plotted, with the brightness falling off exponentially as the point that is actually plotted gets further from its intended location. Each pixel is the somewhat weird area of 2.25 square miles because a smaller area made the whole-world image too big for Flickr to let me post it.

7. 

   postertime (23 months ago | reply)

   Awesome Shot !!!
   .

8. 

   timington (23 months ago | reply)

   stunning series!
   would make great wall art

9. 

   Shadowgolem (23 months ago | reply)

   Amazing work. What a fascinating look at data and our habits.

10. 

    dancouver (23 months ago | reply)

    Love this visualization, amazing work.

11. 

    Éothain (23 months ago | reply)

    Amazing :)

12. 

    Coghill Cartooning (23 months ago | reply)

    Awesome!

13. 

    Peter Krantz (23 months ago | reply)

    Nice! Can you get bulk data over the API:s or did you have to download the data over time?

14. 

    chipoglesby (23 months ago | reply)

    I would love a print of this for my office.

15. 

    Eric Fischer (23 months ago | reply)

    Thanks! In the case of Flickr it is possible to make requests for past time intervals, but in the case of Twitter you need to be watching as it happens to get the data.

16. 

    TailspinT (22 months ago | reply)

    Brilliant!

17. 

    CaptainJack88 (22 months ago | reply)

    That is awesome, I love seeing cities from space at night. You can learn about population density from looking at this picture.

18. 

    PC1024 (22 months ago | reply)

    Do you have the C code? And it be applied to some other regions? Thank you!

19. 

    Ryszard Las (22 months ago | reply)

    So I'm thinking the pix are heavily orange in lovely places where folks want to take extra pictures (e.g., the Sierra Nevadas and Cascades), and the blue spaces are where people don't have anything to look at, so they're just talkin'.

20. 

    miprv (22 months ago | reply)

    Congratulations on this work. If you look on the lower right side, you will see Puerto Rico shining bright with this technology. Could you please post a closer look of Puerto Rico for us residents down here in the Caribbean? Thanks and congrats again...

21. 

    BrianaSprouse (22 months ago | reply)

    You were on mtv:D

22. 

    Eric Fischer (22 months ago | reply)

    Oh, thanks for letting me know!

23. 

    The Lamb Family (22 months ago | reply)

    Would love to see one of Seattle/Tacoma. :) (These are all really awesome!)

24. 

    *Lemur* (22 months ago | reply)

    Amazing.

25. This photo was invited and added to the Authentica group.

26. 

    LokloMedia [deleted] (22 months ago | reply)

    which map/projection did you use as the base? great composite.

27. 

    Eric Fischer (22 months ago | reply)

    It's just cropped from the world map, so it is the same Peters projection as there, even though it isn't really appropriate for this smaller area.

28. 

    njr wallace (12 months ago | reply)

    stunning shot.

29. 

    0olong (10 months ago | reply)

    I'm a tiny bit weirded out by people sharing this image without at all explaining what it is - 'Beautiful Planet Earth' shared it (with credit, but no link) on Google+ at and it's obvious that most of the commenters just assume it's a photograph...

30. 

    Tht1kidd_Dustin (5 months ago | reply)

    L0L at Mr Dews Class that is using these maps.

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