Column: Global heat map shows where people tweet from iPhones vs. Androids

For better or worse, Twitter users have made the social media site into a major source of information.

We've come to rely on the Twitterati to share and divulge immediate details about events both trivial (the reunion of Destiny's Child at the Super Bowl) and very serious (riots and military coups).

Now, Twitter is helping us see the worldwide distribution of smartphones like never before.

Using geolocation data from over 280 million mobile tweets, social media data company Gnip and data visualization company MapBox collaborated with ex-Google data maestro Eric Fischer to compile an interactive Twitter-use heat map.

Using tweets collected since September 2011, the map illustrates the global usage and distribution of Apple iOS, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones.

The interactive map, which you can view here, and also below, codes iPhone tweets as red, Android tweets as green, and BlackBerry tweets as purple.