Twitter and Flickr Light Up the Planet

People love visualizing internet usage, mostly because it's very pretty. But photographer and NYT tech editor Eric Fischer's outdone himself with perhaps the prettiest one of all, mesmerizingly mapping Flickr and Twitter use across the dark surface of the Earth.

The data from North America is pretty surprising! Twitter use is heaviest on in the Southeast and Eastern Seaboard, with much less action on the typically tech-heavy west coast. The central states are, unsurprisingly, something of a dead zone.

The rest of the world is mostly dark—according to this visualization, Twitter and Flickr are almost entirely an activity of the Western World. Oh, and New Zealand. Which loves Flickr.