3D techniques for visualizing user activities on microblogs

Microblogging platforms such as Twitter have recently attracted attention and gained popularity. By using them, people can easily write their opinions and comments on events in the real world in real time. Content on the timeline of Twitter immediately reflects real and virtual activities. The purpose of this paper is to provide 3D components and methods of visualization that enable us to visualize user activities and the roles they play in their networks, i.e., when and how much they tweet, how and when information spreads in their networks, or what kinds of topics they tweet in each community. This paper presents 3D interactive components for visualizing relations between users, their messages, and changes in the number of messages over time. Moreover, we explain methods of comparing variations caused by different timing and by multiple groups of users.