With more and more of the global population using smart phones, researchers have come up with a new way to collect data on social behavior. Since most smart phone users use the Social Media applications to announce just what they are up to at each moment, it is easy to trace their movement.

This so called transparency of movement is used by retail researchers to study the general behavioral pattern of the population. Sarah Williams is an urban planner from New York City working on such a research project at Columbia University. They use data generated by the smart phone in various major cities of the world.

As per their findings so far in Moscow the big shopping centers seem to get the maximum crowds. The most popular amongst these were Afimall City, the European Mall, or Atrium Mall at the edge of the inner city. Fair ammount of traffic was also seen on the Tverskaya which is the most famous shopping street in Moscow.

In Tokyo the residents are always on the move. They travel nearly ten times more than their counterparts in Paris. The Japanese also tend to do their shopping in traffic junctions such as Shinjuku station. New York on the other hand had no distinguished shopping circles like Moscow had with residents going all over the city. Interesting to see how this science project pans in to real life applications.