Trendsmap is a fun mashup that tracks trending Twitter topics by geographical location. The site combines data from the Twitter API and What The Trend which it then displays on a Google map that users can sort by city or general region, seeing the trending topics in real time. All of this is displayed over the map in a manner that looks a bit like a floating tag cloud, which sticks to the location as the user moves the map around.
One problem with Trendsmap was that it is not very good at zooming down to a decent level of detail in a particular city. The degree of detail depends on the number of geo-tagged Tweets getting posted and so far there has simply not been enough to give really high definition, but the site developers says this is changing as more and more people use mobile phones to Tweet.
Trendsmap is popular outside the U.S. and most users are currently based in Europe and South America. A welcome new feature due soon is language localisations which will simply pick up local trends based on the language in the Tweet, starting with Dutch, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. One of the first efforts for localisation was with the Dutch national elections when Trendsmap offered results in both English and Dutch.
Of concern for the company is that Twitter’s local trends feature, which is coming soon, may offer a similar service and remains to be seen whether Trendsmap can stay ahead with new features.
