Twitter Weather Map

by Walter Rafelsberger — 08/01/2008

The Twitter Weather Map is just a simple example to illustrate the hidden power and possible emergence that lies within social media, presence services and livestreams. It is a mashup using data from Twitter, a microblogging service which lets users post little text snippets about what they are doing or thinking.

By using the APIs from summize.com (now acquired by Twitter) and geonames.org it is possible to fetch and analyze geotagged weather related messages from Twitter users. Using co-occurence analysis of weather related terms the mashup displays corresponding weather icons on a map. The result has the look and feel of a classic weather map. The difference is that it is not generated by analyzing data from weather stations, but by leveraging the wisdom of the crowds.

The image above is an overlay of the weather icons generated using the Twitter mashup with an US weather map from the same point of time.

The mashup is also available as a widget and therefore it is possible to embed it in widget platforms and other websites.

Contact

Mag. Walter Rafelsberger, MODUL University Vienna
Department of New Media Technology, Am Kahlenberg 1, 1190 Vienna, Austria
walter.rafelsberger@modul.ac.at | www.modul.ac.at

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