Take a look at this superb interactive tool developed by The New York Times:  A Peek into the Netflix Queue.

The principle is simple enough.  The Times has taken a database of most rented movies from Netflix and overlapped it on ZIP codes on a Google map to create a geodemographic look at tastes and the hyper local level.  New York is shown here, but they’ve featured many cities.

The magic is in the way you can look at the same data in many different aspects.  You can rollover the different ZIPs to see their top ten picks.  You can sort by movie, using a slider to highlight ZIPs in which that movie was the most or least viewed.  You can file through the movies differently:  alphabetically, by most rented, or by “Metascore” ( a score that averages scores given by the nation’s most influential critics, compiled by the very useful Metracritc.com.)

You could call this a prizm presentation.  There’s no dominant point of view.  You have to look at it from many different angles to fully understanding it.

As you might imagine, there are polarizing titles with distinct patterns, such as Mad Men, Obsessed and Last Chance Harvey.

Like Google Earth, this is, of course, most interesting when you’re looking at your own backyard.  My own ZIP (10001 or Chelsea) doesn’t disappoint.  Milk was the most popular movie.  In fact, its pattern looks like most of lower Manhattan.  (I’m proud to say how well I conform to type, having rented every title on the top ten list.)   My friend Charlie McKittrick points out that “Brooklyn is much more eclectic and long-tail in their taste than more main-stream, follow-the-leader zip type ZIP codes like Tribecca/Chelsea and Bergen County NJ, which seem to more consistently be renting off the top of the best seller list”.  Feisty!

So what makes this compelling is the splicing of geodemographic data with some believable measure of something super soft like taste.

It seems to me that this is not only the future of data presentation, but perhaps also the future of newspaper reporting.  I found this article only mildly interesting in the print edition.  It only really works online.  Could all stories (from Madoff to Britney) be told in this multidimensional way?  And would people pay for that?