Twitter’s given us the best approximation of a true, measurable “pulse of the globe” that we’ve ever had and in the last few years we’ve have seen some fantastic Twitter visualizations of world events using all sorts of approaches. I thought that this representation of World Cup Fan activity on Twitter that’s currently displayed on the UK Guardian is pretty awesome. It does a great job of conveying a sense of context and captures the spirit and energy of each game. You can replay each game and see a visual representation of crowd reactions in each country as substitutions are made and goals are scored. Sweet. Here are some screenshots…
Watch the crowd in the US erupt as the score is evened up 1-1 in the England-USA game…(a visceral memory for many of us here in the US).
Special thanks to Rob McGuire for the pointer to this visualization project on the UK Guardian!