Snow Way To Tweet Anybody
Monday, February 2nd, 2009 by Rob Brown
Whilst the train operators web sites were creaking and collapsing under the weight of web traffic dumped upon them by the snow falls of the last 24 hours, the social web was generating new ways to share knowledge and information.
For those planning to travel across the country it is useful to see exactly how much snow is really falling and where. Step forward then Ben March with the latest application to use the wealth of data emerging in real time from the Twitter universe. Twitter users may be perplexed by the number of messages containing the words ’#uk snow’ followed by a series of digits. Those digits provide a postcode and a ’severity level’ for the snowfall. Ben Marsh’s site has been collecting the data giving a live snow fall picture of the UK.
Yes there are flaws, (population density for one) but it shows how Twitter can be harnassed to provide information in new and exciting ways. Check out the latest at Ben’s site and don’t delay as the thaw is surely on the way.
