The Big Bang in twitter -via mashable and infographic

n March 21, 2006, Twitter’s founders published their first tweets. If you look at that moment as a big bang of influence in the ever-expanding Twittersphere, how does Twitter’s cosmos look today? Web design studio Information Architects aims to answer that with an enormous visualization of the Cosmic 140, or the 140 most influential users on Twitter.The map may look a bit chaotic at first, but it’s not. The founders of Twitter are at the very center of the “galaxy”; longtime Twitter users are closer to the middle, and the two circles for each user (the white one and the transparent one) represent list volume and the number of followers respectively. Users are organized around the circle according to category (indicated on the outer rim of the sphere), such as sports, politics, humor and so forth. Additionally, you can see the first tweet of each user on the map.
As hard as it is to determine the exact level of influence of individual Twitter users, the visualization is an amazing sight to behold. It’s huge, complex and beautiful.