Twitter released its latest user numbers on Tuesday, revealing that it finally crossed the 250 million global user mark.
But pictures can often be more effective when trying to transmit the reach and power of a service like Twitter, which is why the company's recently-released global activity animation offers a better sense of just how widespread the service has become.
[seealso slug="twitter-data-hungover"]
Posted by Twitter Data, the animation correlates Twitter mentions (in many different languages) of the word "sunrise" around the planet with the time of sunrise and sunset at that location.
Watch the #sunrise on Twitter #animation #map #datavizhttp://t.co/HZ470d78q0 pic.twitter.com/e0Qn8JfGq8— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) April 30, 2014
So while the mere mention of the world "sunrise" doesn't necessarily guarantee that the Twitter user was viewing or about to view an actual sunrise, a look at the animation shows that the most frequent use of the word does indeed come just before and during sunrise in each location.
The fascinating animation shows what looks like a line of fire erupting across the planet in concert with the real-time arrival of daylight as it hits each nation. In a way, this is historic.
[seealso slug="data-visualization-projects"]
For centuries humans have kept personal journals, logging the arrival of sunrise in their diaries as the signal of a new day and the beginning of fresh possibilities. With Twitter serving as a kind of public-personal diary for the planet, we can finally see the pulse of the planet as it reacts to the coming of a new day in real-time.
Twitter almost certainly has more granular data on our morning habits that would reveal more about our movements. But this infographic snapshot, taken on April 6, is nevertheless a rare and valuable glimpse into how important the arrival of sunrise remains to humanity, even as we huddle around the artificial lighting of our many devices.