Twitter's New Interactive Map Shows the Most Popular NFL Teams in Each County of the United States

Twitter recently released an interactive map of NFL teams' popularity around the country titled #NFL2014 : Where are you team's followers. The map was created by curating information from Twitter users in each county in the United States and looking at what NFL team accounts they follow. The map gives users a visual look into where Twitter-using fans can be found geographically as well as a visual into watch teams have dominate fan loyalty is certain regions. While interacting with the map, it gives users the three most popular teams by percent in a county. It allows user to explore this data through searching for specific teams by county or on a national scale. It also allows users to compare fan bases of two teams. 

Upon analyzing this article published on USA Today's For the Win section, it can be seen that all four aspects of P-I-C-K are evident, mainly because the article incorporates the Twitter's interactive map and provides discussion of some key findings of the map.

Personalization and Interactivity are provided by this graphic, so each reader can choose their team and compare to others. The author specifically explains to the reader how they can use the map through choosing their personal teams to search. This is exhibiting personalization as the user can alter the map to relate to themselves and their needs; they are thus interacting with the map in the article through personalization and inputing their content of choose of teams. Through personalization, the user is able to adjust the amount of information they receive and ensure the at interactive aspect of the map does not become too much or overwhelming. The explanation of the map by the author allows readers to be able to engage with the information and content of the map. 

Contiguity through the author's explanations and examination provides insight into big trends in the map.  In the beginning of the article the author enacts contiguity by explaining how the map was created through the curation of Twitter data and how users can interact with the map. The visual portion of contiguity following up this explanation is Twitter's NFL fan map, itself. Another way that contiguity is addressed in the article is through the author's discussion of key findings of the map such as "The Cowboys have fans just about everywhere" or "Florida is a melting pot of football allegiances". These sub-headlines are followed up with a short and concise sentence that describes the sub-headlines and then paired with a visual of the map as altered to see the sub headline. 

The nonexistence of kick-outs enables the user to stay engaged with the article and map. This is mainly due to the direct integration of Twitter's NFL fan map into the article and the limited text. This integration allows readers of the article to directly interact the map on the article's webpage instead of having to go elsewhere to use it. In addition, there were no other distractions to the reader of the article. There were no pop-up advertisements or links to other articles and pages on the sides of the site. Instead, other links were found at the bottom of the website after the article. The only thing that could be considered a kick-out would be the links to share the article on social networking sites. These social networking links are also included at the conclusion of the article and thus act a reminder as opposed to a direct kick-out.