Archive for November 2nd, 2008
Developers: Get Your Twitter Vote Report GeoJSON Feed Here
Just ignore this post if the phrase "JavaScript Object Notation" means nothing to you, but I want to make a point of mentioning that the GeoJSON feed of all Twitter Vote Report data is now up and running. That’s all the reports in our data stream, tagged with geographic information.
We want (and are very close to begging) you to make use of it. Grab it and mash it up with whatever you like — whether that’s polling place locations, real-time results, or something else. If you come up with something neat, just let us now in the comments.
Oh yeah, there’s also a Twitter Vote Report KML link that works in Google Earth, if that’s more your style. That link will update the file every 60 seconds with new reports.
On Twitter’s Value for Non-Tweeters
Blogger Robleh Ali has some interesting thoughts on how #votereport changed his thinking about the usefulness of Twitter:
I’m torn on the value of Twitter. For a long time I have thought it largely useless because I don’t know anyone who uses it and dismissed it as a phenomenon of the tech blogosphere echo chamber. However as with Flickr I have started to see the value of it now I can see it presented in a way I actually find useful.
…
What changed my mind was Twitter Vote Report. This service gives a realtime update of useful information such as wait times on election day. Combined with Plodt this gives a stream of valuable realtime information that could not come from anywhere else. It does not matter that most people aren’t Twitter users - there are enough of them to continuously monitor what is happening and with the right tools that info can be turned into something valuable to non-Twitter users like me.
Worth a read, as it raises an interesting question. Is there some magical critical mass of reports that TVR needs to reach to be useful? Certainly, some visualization don’t work nearly as well with only a few data points. But given the way Twitter encourages users to pick up and amplify information, Robleh suggests that even a few solid reports can have big impact.
Now Available: State-by-State Twitter Vote Report Maps (and More Data Feeds)
Driving the Twitter Vote Report all along has been the idea that real-time information on how elections are proceeding is all the more valuable when it’s local. That’s why it’s particularly exciting that we now have state-level Google maps to offer up. As is everything in TVR land, these maps are still beta. But what’s great about these embeds is that you can add them to your site now, and it will automatically be updated with improvements as they come out.
To embed the Twitter Vote Report map for your state as an iframe, paste this code into your site:
<iframe src="http://votereport.us/reports/map?state=OH" frameborder="0" class="stream" width="535" height="500" scrolling="yes" ></iframe>
That will reproduce the map for Ohio displayed below. To display a map of your state, just replace "OH" with your two-character state abbreviation in the above code.
If you have the chops to build your own visualizations, more power to you. We’ve got the JSON data stream powering the map, as well as some variations on that feed (including a GoogleEarth KML layer), over on the See It in Action Page.
Wait Times Visualized: Check Out Plodt’s Plotting
Our partner Plodt is a rather new Twitter visualization service. They’ve been whipping up some intriguing charting of wait times across the country, pulling from the stream of Twitter Vote Report data. At present, there are only a handful of data points in any one location, so the information should be taken with a grain of salt.
That said, even at this early stage it’s fascinating to comb through Plodt’s early chartings, including places like Holladay, Utah, where a report came in of a 200 minute wait. Lest you think that the good folks at Plodt wasted time building a page for Holladay — which I’m sure is a lovely place but isn’t really one of your election hot spots — a rather neat feature is that city and state pages are created on the fly. If someone tweets a tweet market "votereport" from any spot in the country, then bam!, a Plodt page is created for it.
Keep an eye on Plodt. They’re going to be, I suspect, some of the more interesting visualizations that come out of Twitter Vote Report.
Great New Video: Twitter Vote Report in Four Minutes or Less
We’ve got a fun new video up on YouTube that sums up TVR in just a few minutes. It’s the work of extraordinary team member Noel Hidalgo, known to the Internet as noneck. Noel helps lead a Brooklyn-based non-profit production group called Not An Alternative, whose members helped Noel turned the video into the piece of art that it is.
Give it a look, and please don’t hesitate to send it around.
