Pop, Soda, or Coke? Twitter Maps Soft Drink Lingo

No Comments | Written on July 10, 2012 at 1:00 pm, by Lesley Kennedy

Soda: Food News Tomato, to-MAH-to; either, EYE-ther; soda, pop. But let’s not call the whole thing off: One data scientist is out to settle the great debate on whether a soft drink should be referred to as “soda,” “pop,” or even “coke.”

And the answer really depends on where you live.

Twitter’s Edwin Chen writes on his blog, which was picked up by the food blog TheDailyMeal.com, that he “sampled geo-tagged tweets containing the words ‘soda,’ ‘pop,’ or ‘coke,’ performed some state-of-the-art NLP technology to ensure the tweets were soft drink related (e.g., the tweets had to contain ‘drink soda’ or ‘drink a pop’), and tried to filter out coke tweets that were specifically about the Coke brand (e.g., Coke Zero).”

The fizzy findings: If you live on the West or East coasts, you probably say “soda.” Midwesterners prefer “pop,” and Southerners reach for a “coke.”

As for the rest of the world, pretty much only Americans and Canadians use the word “pop,” while, interestingly, “fizzy drink” tweets were found coming out of the U.K., New Zealand, South Africa, and Maine (what’s up with that, Pine Tree State?); “mineral” showed up in Nigeria, and folks from Massachusetts seemed to tweet the word “tonic” (pronounced “TAW-nic. That’s wickedly wee-id).

Chen also analyzed Super Bowl snack tweets (wings, beer, and pizza took the top spots, respectively).

What, no fizzy drinks for football fans?