What are all the words on the map?

The words on the map are taken from recent tweets (you know, from twitter). We track the words, or topics, as they become more or less popular in overall tweets, and only show the important ones.

How am I supposed to see/scroll the map with all the topics everywhere?

Sometimes the topics take over most of the screen and it can be difficult to scroll. If this happens simply use the plus/minus icons to zoom in/out a bit and give yourself a chance to see where you are and scroll by dragging a piece of the map that isn't covered by a topic. You can also go to your current location, your area, and the global view by using the other icons next to the zoom.

How come I started way over there?

We use google to help us get your location (geoip). This doesn't always work correctly, sorry about that.

When are the topics on the map from?

Trendsmap is continuously tracking twitter trends, right down to the second. New trends should appear within minutes, and they may gradually increase or decrease in prominence as they become more or less popular. Trendsmap only shows topic trends for up to one week, less if the trend is weaker. If you watch the topics on the map you will often see them adjusting real-time.

Why is there no words from my house/village/town/etc?

Trendsmap uses a large volume of tweets and various algorithms to determine what is trending for a given location. While it is true that the tweets from your house/village/town/etc may be trending to a particular topic, your area may not generate enough for them to show compared to other, larger areas.

Do you have any cool videos from Trendsmap showing events unfold over time?

Yes. Checkout our events page, and also you can subscribe to our channel on youtube to keep up to date with the latest additions

What can I do to get more tweets from my area on Trendsmap?

Trendsmap uses the location set in your user profile on twitter.com to determine your location. The more accurate that is, the better Trendsmap can use your tweets. For example, 'California' is not specific enough for Trendsmap to use when calculating local trends, but if you specify your location to be 'San Francisco, USA' it will be able to gain sufficient information to use your tweet to help generate localised trends.

Are people really tweeting about that in the middle of the water/desert/whatever?

Probably not. This could be for two reasons:

• While topics are organised around a location, in order to display them sometimes they will appear to be some distance away, or
• sometimes the location users give twitter isn't accurate, or they may be tweeting from another location and forgot to update their profile

How come the topics in my area are so light - I can barely see them!

Stronger trends are represented by larger, darker topics. In order to stay consistent, if your area is not showing strong trends compared to the rest of the world, they will be naturally lighter. We are always looking for ways to make Trendsmap more useable, but in the mean time you can mouse over the trends to highlight them and read them more easily.

How many tweets/locations/topics are you tracking?

We are currently processing around 5 million tweets per day. We have over 500 cities from around the world that have their own page on the site (eg Melbourne), and the number of topics changes depending on what people are tweeting about.

Why are there topics mostly from english speaking countries?

Trendsmap currently only uses tweets that are in English. One of the features we plan to add in the future is support for other languages.

I still don't get it, how do I use this site?

You start with a view of your region where you can see the trending topics. You can scroll the maps by dragging to another area, or zoom in or out using the plus/minus icons. When you see something that looks interesting click on that topic for more information such as graphs of the volume of tweets locally vs. worldwide, what the topic is most likely about, images, links, and most recent tweets. You can also see where else this topic popular by clicking on the topic within the detail display, or what else are people tweeting about at this location by clicking on the location name.

That's all well and good, but you should really fix XYZ…

I'm glad you said that. There are two ways you can offer feedback on this site, be it a feature suggestion, bug report, or whatever.

• There is a suggestions link in the page footer, which goes to a dedicated uservoice forum for offering feedback and voting for your favourites.
• There is also a contact link in the page footer. You can use that to email us directly.