Found Object

A Beautiful Illustration of Where Flickr and Twitter Are Used

Eric Fischer
Adam Martin 14,074 Views Jul 8, 2011

Photographer Eric Fischer* turned a lot of heads last year with his Flickr set that used the site's geotags to map various cities. Yesterday, he posted a new set on his Flickr stream, illustrating where in the United States, Europe, and the world people tend to use Twitter, and where they tend to use Flickr. The red dots indicate Flickr posts, and the blue, Twitter. One might not necessarily expect to see a lot of difference between the two, but once you get the visual it's stunning and, in parts, pretty stark. Below is the U.S. map, where more Flickr users have tagged the mountains in the west but more Twitter users seem to be operating in the Southeast. Notice how the cities and main highways facilitate both, but there's that band of relative darkness running through the central states. All in all, beautiful:

This is the rendition of Europe, which Fischer says, "Reminds me of the cover art for King Crimson's Islands":

And finally, the whole world. Note the bright blue streaks of Twitter in Japan and Indonesia, and the red patch of Flickr in New Zealand:

Note: An earlier version of this story identified Fischer as an employee of The New York Times. That is incorrect.

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