How Twitter Proves That Place Matters

Twitter is a fascinating place to explore not just the connectedness of people but of places. In a previous post, I mapped the locations of the 500 leading "Twitterati." When it comes to celebrities, the Twitterverse is still overwhelmingly American: almost three quarters of them are located in the United States. Los Angeles, with its large celebrity contingent, took the top spot among metros, followed by New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.

A new study, "The Geography of Twitter Networks," by my University of Toronto colleagues Yuri Takhteyev, Barry Wellman and Anatoliy Gruzd from Dalhousie University takes a far more detailed look at the geography of Twitter and what it can tell us about the nature of interaction and proximity in the Internet age. Many predicted the rise of the Internet and of social media would annihilate distance and overcome the constraints of place by allowing people to communicate and build virtual communities. But the fact of the matter is Twitter actually works with and reinforces the power of place.