Innovation is an elemental part of regional economic growth. In the past
years, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have enabled
new means for data collection, and analysis for the study of regional
innovation systems. This paper investigates innovation and technology
messaging in Twitter, which has been described as the SMS of the
Internet. The concept of electronic capital (e-capital) is applied in
order to find out how technology messaging relates to the economic
situation in metropolitan areas. The recently introduced concept of
e-capital is cultivated from the conceptualizations of innovation
acknowledging that different forms of capital, including human, social,
and economic, circulate and have an effect on each other. The analysis
indicates that clusters of e-capital and potential growth clusters are
identifiable by using Twitter activity. In Europe, e-capital
agglomerates to previously identified clusters of the “Blue Banana” and
the “Golden Banana” (or the “Sun Belt”). Based on spatial statistics, we
apply Categories of Metropolitan Areas (COMAs) in order to classify
Twitter intensive locations across Europe. We defined four COMAs and
estimated their e-capital potential. The most problematic COMA lies in
Eastern Europe whereas the strongest concentration is found in Western
Europe.