Twitter trends for the rest of us: Trendsmap

One of the major problems with data about internet usage is the amount that is dominated by American internet users. Great if you’re wanting to know what Americans, or predominantly American audiences, are up to. Less great for the rest of us.

The trending topics on Twitter are a classic example of that: dominated by the weight of numbers from the US, they really only tell us what is trending amongst Americans with but the occasional exception thrown in.

Trendsmap, however, does not suffer from that. By taking tweets for which associated location data is available, it plots the trending topics around the world, letting you see what is trending in Britain or Canada or Brazil or Canterbury or Berlin. Zoom in too close and the ‘trends’ are drawn from so little data that you get effectively random answers, but keep at a sensible distance and it packs a range of useful information.

The site is at http://trendsmap.com