Topical Data Post: Pokemon Go

I live in Canada which means we hear a lot about things that are United States-only. The latest (and the largest, outstripping in volume and velocity even the iPhone (which I may misremember being the last must-have-thing back in 2007)) is the hit augmented-reality mobile game Pok'emon GO.

One gameplay mechanic of Pok'emon GO (I am told) revolves around hatching eggs. These eggs hatch not after a certain period of time, but after you have walked a certain distance with the application open on your phone.

The kicker is that the distance is measured in kilometres, a unit whose use the United States and United Kingdom have evaded (yes, despite the latter’s metrication since 1965). People in the United States are being confronted with unfamiliar distance units of 2km, 5km, and 10km.

This, via some Twitter jabs, lead me to Google Trends and a prediction: what if Pok'emon GO’s release date in a region that still uses miles as a unit of distance could be detected simply through the rise in search volume for the term “5km”?

So far, the data for the United States is consistent:

I await the UK launch date to follow-up.

:chutten

https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/units-and-data-pokemon-go/