Heat maps are a great way to visualize the density of an observed phenomenon. A heat map shows with a red color the maximum density of the data while with a yellow and green color a decreasing density of the data.
For example the density of Twitter users - or any other social network like Instagram or Flickr- that have been tweeting in a certain moment and at a certain place.
In particular, the heat maps are described at the following link https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/layer-heatmap
Have been using it with location data from the three social networks i.e. Twitter, Flickr and Instagram. Aproximately a million data points have been used for each of the heat maps presented below and here are the results.
Another interesting visualization would be to make a dynamic heat map which shows how each of those maps evolves during the 24 h of the day. I will post that in the next post so stay tuned ;-)
