[oriste]

Seeing Indonesia bulge like that confirms my own observations of the previous years. Nice to see that. What I have difficulty in believing is the sheer size of Russia's volume, that seems a bit out of place. Rob? Otherwise, fantastic job!

[robhawkes]

Seeing the smaller countries bulge is very interest. What is out of place about Russia? It's a big place and needs to make up for the vacuum left by China and India.

[oriste]

Granted it's a big place, but if the size on the map is a representation of the volume of tweets, it appears as if 143Mio Russians have a higher volume than 600Mio Europeans (in more or less the same time zones). I had assumed that with internet penetration for Russia estimated at 60Mio (± same as Germany alone), it would not beat the combined internet users of the EU countries. I could be wrong though, just curious.

[robhawkes]

In this case, you're likely right but the effect is offset by the lack of tweets and huge vacuum in the areas below Russia. The geometry is preserved as much as possible so the vacuum will pull Russia (which at least has some tweets) down to fill.

[oriste]

Aha. So you're saying we can't compare e.g. the tweet volumes of the UK or France with Russia based on the size of the country as depicted on your map? BTW Canada and Greenland seem out of proportion as well. But regardless, I've been hooked on this map since I found out about it this morning. Fascinating.

[robhawkes]

Effectively, yes. Just because a country is bigger / smaller than another doesn't mean that you can draw immediate conclusions about the relationship between those countries. A bloated country basically means that it's sending proportionately more global tweets than it's geographic area would suggest.