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The Connected States of America

This may help explain some community dynamics more than census divisions or state lines.

The Connected States of America from Mashable

“Your community used to be defined geographically: the group of people around your block, your subdivision, your small town. But as these infographics show, community now extends as far as your cellphone can call — and has created some interesting new conglomerations of states in the US.

The Connected States of America is a series of illustrations based on mobile penetration, SMS and call communications. For example, it tells us that New Englanders like to call each other a great deal, whereas Californians can easily be divided into two or three mobile communities.

There’s a pretty nifty interactive map and a video illustrating the findings. All of the maps and visuals are based on research done by the MIT Sensible Lab, AT&T and IBM, aggregated from July 2010.

Take a look through the gallery and let us know if you agree. What does mobile data say about your community?”

The Connected States of America

Call Data Community Map

SMS Data Community Map

Interactive Map

Stephen

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Posted on: July 15, 2011, 7:39 am Category: Uncategorized

By: stephen

rev="post-9397" 1 comment

One Response

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  1. Michael Golrick said
    on July 17, 2011 12:10 am

    First, it is an interesting presentation of the data.

    Second, I have lived in a number of the places which show up crossing state borders (NW Wisconsin/Minnesota and currently New Orleans). What surprises me the most is the very clear delineation on all, except the last map, between the New York metro area and Southwestern Connecticut. Two of Connecticut’s largest 5 cities fall into the media maps for greater New York (Bridgeport and Stamford). Yet most of the maps show them as clearly part of CT/New England. My personal experience makes me wonder about the sources of the data used for the mapping. The other parts of the maps, from my personal experience, make great sense. NW Wisconsin aligns more with the Twin Cities, and that is shown on the maps. Likewise there is a great deal of alignment between New Orleans and Southern Mississippi (I do wonder how far up the effect really goes). Certainly the Arizona/New Mexico alignments make sense to me. Just a personal observation…