In its IPO frenzy to squeeze the most potential value out of each and every one of its 232 million active users, Twitter has overlooked one of the social network's most popular activities: Profanity. If properly harnessed, all of the F bombs and S bombs of Twitter could power ... well, something.
As FBomb.co, the latest Twitter profanity tracker, illustrates, people love to use the F word in their tweets. Unlike its predecessors, including Profane Twitter, a U.S. heat map of 2011, that map that tracked the most rude areas in America and the late, lamented Twitter retweet account, @Cursebird, FBomb.co interactive map tracks this one specific word — in real time.
Wait a moment for the site to load, and you'll soon see weaponized map pins exploding in a tiny cloud when they hit the location from whence the F word-containing tweet was dropped. Click on a map pin, and you see the potentially offending tweet.
According to Twitter, 70 percent of its users are outside the United States but according to this map, it's that minority of Twitter users within the U.S. dropping most of the F bombs. You'll quickly see there's a lot of F-bomb dropping in New York City. If you let the map run long enough, though, you'll also spot some interesting interesting international uses of the F bomb.
And if you prefer your Twitter F bombs to stay on Twitter, you can also follow the project's retweeting engine.
"We were talking about how people misuse and abuse the English language," says Martin Gingras on his website. "As the conversation devolved, swearing was brought up," the computer science student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario continues. "In particular we talked about how swearing can completely undermine one's argument."
That's effing debatable, though a few of the random F bombs are retweeted via the @Fbomb Twitter account certainly support his argument. Here are some examples, made safe for work through the magic of asterisks:
@martinamercure : I hate when people drag there feet when they are walking like "PICK UP YOUR F****** FEET"@Tony_Laker : F*** @PartyyPat_ : PEOPLE NEED TO GET THE F*** OUTTA MY FACE WITH THEIR B*******! Can't even handle this anymore, jst shut the f***up! One thing after another@abtxo_ : I don't f*** w nobody at this school fr , I notice it more and more everyday .@davidjohnson717 : I'm Lebron James, you a f***** rookie@fallonstreef : You're sucha f****** dramatic little b****@Umeroff : @imrancrickter how many times did you actually f****** succeed as an opener? Stop f***** blaming others Incompetent Kid. #PAKvSA
Twitter, in its new partnership with ratings monitoring service Nielsen, may never figure out a real way to cash in on the fact that people can't shut up about #Scandal every Thursday at 10 p.m. ET. But certainly, knowing where, when and why people eff around on Twitter should be of value. FBomb.co is certainly more interesting to watch than "Scandal." And you don't have to worry about spoilers!
Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on Twitter and/or Facebook.