Steven Romalewski of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research reached out after my previous post, which outlined UMapper’s approach for mapping real-time Twitter posts. The CUNY Mapping Service recently launched the Census Hard to Count 2010 site, designed to assist in increasing participation in the 2010 census. The application displays areas determined as “hard to count” areas (methodology here), along with several layers of thematic data.
The site was recently updated with a Twitter feed that uses the #census and #census2010 hashtags. This serves two purposes: acts as a geo-referenced feed for census information, and also helps create increase communications between census advocates and citizens interested in the 2010 census. It’s also a great real-world application of georeferenced Twitter data. While the percentage of users that have enabled geotagging is estimated to be under 1%, the total number of users in the USA is estimated to be 18 million. So even a small fraction of users still represents a large quantity of georeferenced data. Also, geotagging is still relatively new to Twitter – so the adoption rate may stand to grow as more people turn it on, and as more client application add the option to geotag posts.
To display the Twitter feed in the Hard to Count site, you just need to click on the Twitter tab on the upper left portion of the application (see screenshot to the left). You can also choose the hashtag you would like to display, and the relevant post are displayed on the side panel as well as on the map. Additionally, you can select a post on the left and choose the “Show on Map” option. This will display the selected side panel post on the map.
It’s great to see a real-world use case for geotagged micromedia data – so feel free to check it out at www.censushardtocountmaps.org. Hopefully this is a sign of more to come!
I had the opportunity to check out the new update from UMapper today, which adds the ability to layer real-time tweets over your maps. While there are a lot of real-time tweet-mapping applications out there, the interesting thing about UMapper’s implementation is that you can create a map with a specific search term built into the map metadata.
See below for an example: this map focuses on the Washington DC area, showing tweets with the word “Toyota” in them. In the map below, you can also pan and zoom – which will show the posts from any area of interest.
UMapper has come along quite away since the last time I looked at it, which was around a year ago. The map above uses OpenStreetMap as a base layer, and there are quite a few improvements: different base data providers, several templates, as well as a flexible user permissions system that allows for collaborative mapping. While I didn’t include anything fancy in the map above, it is also possible to mash in other data sources (e.g. KML, GeoRSS, GPX). This allows you to easily design and share maps.
The ability to embed maps, such as the one above, is also a nice capability. For example, it would be great for event monitoring – where people all over the world may be using a Twitter hashtag to talk about the event, but you are only interested in tweets from the specific event location. While geotagged tweets have been possible to view in Google Maps for awhile now, I think the UMapper approach presents an attractive alternative for homing in on specific topics of interest.
The big news in the location-enabled social media biz this past week was a new update from Yelp. As described in the TechCrunch post, the latest iPhone update from Yelp now allows check-ins. This is a great development: check-ins allow people to share their location, connect, and say what the think about where they have checked in. All of these things are good. They allow us to to learn about particular spaces, share our own information and experiences about them, and provide a scheme that makes us feel good about “checking in.” At first blush, these systems work fine…
But here’s the problem: locked-in environments. The first location-based system I started using was Gowalla. Why? Because, like many other people, I don’t live in NYC or Los Angeles. I live in a small city that wasn’t on the initial Foursquare list. That’s fine: I started using Gowalla because it doesn’t care what city you’re in and allows you to create “spots” for anywhere. Then, in a recent development, Foursquare allowed check-ins from any city. OK – great news, and I started to try it out. But then came Yelp – yet another system that allows me to check-in. So I now have three systems that I can check-in on. All of them will allow me to update Twitter or Facebook, but they are are still independent of each other. I can’t add a “place” to Foursquare and Gowalla at the same time. Choosing one system means ignoring another. And by investing my time in one system, I’ll be less inclined to join into the next system that comes along allowing check-ins.
Sooooo, here’s calling for a universal check-in system. Why is it that I have to choose between Yelp, Foursquare, or Gowalla? Should I not be able to check in on a phone, and then that data gets shared with every location-based Social Media program I have subscribed to? Interoperability will provide these products with features to differentiate on other than the ability to check-in. And I suppose that’s the good thing about such a dynamic market space: greater competition and adoption will (hopefully) reward providers that support and promote interoperability.
Steven Romalewski of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research reached out after my previous post, which outlined UMapper’s approach for mapping real-time Twitter posts. The CUNY Mapping Service recently launched the Census Hard to Count 2010 site, designed to assist in increasing participation in the 2010 census. The application displays areas determined as “hard to count” areas (methodology here), along with several layers of thematic data.
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