Is this the structure of New York City?

I love this Straupian map made up of 10,000 NYC-based tweet locations on top of an Open Street Map rendering of New York City. A few quick observations:

• Staten Island gets cropped off! Lots of New Jersey though.
• I would have assumed Broadway would be the boldest stroke on the map, but not quite that bold.
• Why is the Williamsburg bridge shaped like a Charlie Brown stripe? Or is that something else?
• There's a tweet from the walking plank that bisects the reservoir. I wish I could read that tweet!
• People tweet over Roosevelt Island, but not on Roosevelt Island. No tweets from Islands Ellis, Riker's, Rat, Hart, or Governor's, but one from City Island. (I always misremember City Island as being called "Island Island").
• No tweets on Carnasie Pol (larger map here)



• One tweet going into Greenwood Cemetery. It could also be a stray geotag off 5th avenue, but I like to think it's "omw to grandpa's funeral."
• This looks a lot more like a map of class distribution or tourism & nightlife attractions than population density, ethnic or racial distribution.
• The Upper East Side barely tweets.

Is this the structure of New York City? flickr.com/photos/walking…

— Al Shaw (@A_L) January 23, 2012

(Via Al)

Comments

[finn]

This looks a lot more like a map of class distribution or tourism & nightlife attractions than population density, ethnic or racial distribution.

It looks like a map of people tweeting when they have a free minute to do so i.e. in cabs, in cars, on the subway, on commuter trains.

[David Jacobs]

Maybe? I'd be eager to see that map, but I think it'd be heavier on 5th Ave & Lex and much lighter on Broadway if that was the case.

[Ezra]

This is good.

But looks fishy! Why is there nothing off the main drags? And the points are connected—how did they do that, and what does it mean?

[David Jacobs]

I'm not sure - I actually just asked him on the flickr thread.

[David Jacobs]

Eric wrote: "By vector I just meant the motion between two locations implied by two successive geotagged tweets by the same person."