Dave Troy is attempting to map the entirety of Twitter connections (users and their followers) in Baltimore city, an amplification of his Twittervision index of geocoded tweets from one year ago.
Troy, the cofounder of software product startup 410 Labs, is building out this map through People Maps, a mapping app for Twitter first developed by Troy and others during Baltimore’s Civic Hack Day in February 2011.
Contribute your connections by authorizing People Maps to access your Twitter.
The data being collected, according to Troy, is not individual tweets. It does, however, collect the metadata surrounding follower relationships on Twitter.
Collecting such metadata, as Troy demonstrated with Twittervision, can serve to challenge popular notions of Internet connectedness: namely, that people living in poorer areas of a city aren’t using the Internet or social media.
Troy plans to present what data he has collected at TEDxBaltimore City 2.0 during Baltimore Innovation Week.
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