Local Twitter trends with Trendsmap

What are people talking about? That used to be a speculative question, but since the advent of blogs and now Twitter, it’s become a more tractable problem. You don’t have the time to read and distill a million Twitter messages, but your computer does. Algorithmically it’s getting to be pretty straightforward.

Trendsmap caught my eye tonight, partly because of two weather related events dominating local weather in two different parts of the world. Trendsmap uses Twitter to show you what the buzz is both globally and locally, and the design is so attractive that you can easily waste a lot of time on it.

Okay, here’s your quiz. What are people talking about in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area these days?

That one didn’t surprise me, since I had been following that story on the news. But I didn’t know about the dust storms in Australia.

Crikey! It’s pretty apparent that dust is not only dominating local brainwaves, but that the massive storm has an end-of-the-world feel to it. Watch this video from Broken Hill, New South Wales and see if you can see why.