If you’re based in the UK, there’s a very good chance you have experienced a good dusting of snow. If you’re using Twitter, you have probably seen the hashtag: #uksnow and may also be aware that it has a trending topic. For those who are not au fait with hashtags, they are keywords that often link together tweets on a particular subject. So, if you searched on Twitter for the hashtag #BGT, you would be able to read all tweets written by people concerning Britain’s Got Talent.
UKsnow
Last night, and even today, you will see people creating tweets with the hashtag #uksnow, the first part of their postcode (e.g. SA1) and a mark out of ten (e.g. 3/10) – to indicate the severity of the snow. Now you may well ask, why were people doing this? Well, some clever chap – Ben Marsh has taken the data from postcodes and severity of snow and created a Google Mashup. His map very clearly displays where snow is falling across the UK. A Twitter timeline on the same page shows the tweets as they come in and often includes the latest pictures. The tweets were coming in at a rate of knots last night – around 800 per minute at one point.
Creations like this show the true power of Twitter – to harness the power (or observations) of thousands upon thousands of people and turn it into something meaningful, relevant and timely.
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