Sometimes you just need a break. So do I. Then I either persuade a colleague to play some soccer in the hallway, or press the Stumble button. This afternoon I chose the latter and ended up at TwittEarth, a rather smashing visualization of the Twitter public timeline.
It’s a mash-up by Digitas France SA, who created this Twittearth for fun. Although I don’t question their motives, creating a Twitter mash-up seems like the perfect free publicity PR tool these days.
Just ask somebody to develop a 3D engine (Papervision), use an API for the geolocalization service (Yahoo!) and find some fancy icons (Fasticon). The result? Some heavy coverage on world’s largest tech blogs:
- TechCrunch: TwittEarth Makes Twitter A Global Experience
- Mashable: TwittEarth Shows Tweets From Around The World
Keep that in mind, all you web design agencies out there. Don’t spend your money on ads, just go creative with Twitter and let the blogosphere do the rest.
Company to visit guides on Granada (Spain).
I think these mashups are done because they are fun, not to generate publicity. Publicity is often a welcome side effect.
I made my first mash up just as a fun way to learn how to program ruby.
shameless self promotion:
I thought the result of my playing was so cool, I bought it a domain and put it up for the world to see (sadstatements.com). I wonder how many other mashups were created to for fun?