CNN Ecosphere: 3D Ecosystem Globe Grows on #cop17 Tweets

The goal of CNN's Ecosphere [cnn-ecosphere.com] by Minivegas and Stinkdigital is a real-time Twitter visualization that aims to reveal how the online discussion is evolving around the topic of climate change. More specifically, the visualization aggregates all Twitter messages on the topic of #cop17 (in case you wonder, this is an abbreviation for "The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)". The online visualization consists of an interactive 3D globe, described as a "lush digital ecosystem" that closely resembles the look and behavior of real plants and trees in nature. In practice, the virtual plants in the 3D Ecosphere grow from those tweets that are tagged with #COP17. Each tweet about climate change feeds into a plant representing that specific topic or discussion, causing it to grow a little more. The result thus becomes an mesmerizing, real-time visual representation of how the world "sees" climate change (try clicking on one of the tweet messages), or... an interactive Tron-like Lindenmayer forest, whatever you fancy the most. Reminds me of Ecotonoha.

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