This is my favorite new toy. It’s a site called Trendsmap and it shows tweets on a Google map.  Yes, it’s in real time and just like a tag cloud, words are big or small, bold or thin based on number of tweets.

I love looking at Twitter trending topics. But there are only 10 and they lump in tweets from all over the world. I want to know what my community is tweeting about. Now I can and I can also see where most of the tweets are coming from.

If I click on one of the floating words, a small window pops up and I can watch the latest tweets.

I’m not surprised to see the words: politics, debate, policy, organization, congress and funding. These are all typical DC topics. But it’s important that I see people are still tweeting about: ACORN, Kirk (referring to Paul Kirk), vaccine (for H1N1), and summit (G20).

As a journalist, people will ask why I’m covering a certain topic. Some believe the media hypes up stories. Others think we fail to report on certain topics enough.

We can now use tools like Trendsmap find out whether people need more information or if they’ve moved on.

For example, we report on the H1N1 flu every day. It’s a hot topic. We–as journalists– are getting sick of covering this story. Yet we continue to pitch H1N1 ideas because we know it’s important. But are viewers board? Are they truly getting the information they need, or are they tuning it out? According to Trendsmap people in our area are still interested. This is important for journalists to know.

It’s also a way for people to get the latest news. It’s a high-tech version of word-of-mouth. I logged onto Trendsmap to find that “Ginsburg” was a top trending topic in DC. I clicked the tag and quickly learned the Supreme Court Justice had been hospitalized. I didn’t hear this on the news. I heard it on Twitter. Just as if a friend called me and said, “Hey, have you heard…”

But how accurate is Trendsmap? Because I just discovered this tool, I’m not quite sure. It claims that the updates are in real time. But when I investigate further I find that some of the tweets were posted hours ago. There is a disclaimer. The company says it just launched and they are still working out the bugs and adding more “hot cities.” I can only hope the data gets better. This is definitely a toy I want to keep playing with!

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