“Intern Creates Visual Map of Facebook Friendships - PC Magazine” plus 1 more |
| Intern Creates Visual Map of Facebook Friendships - PC Magazine Posted: 14 Dec 2010 10:44 AM PST By: Sara Yin  Ever wonder what the world looks like to Mark Zuckerberg? A Facebook intern has created a social map of "human relationships" out of a sample of Facebook user data. The map was created by Paul Butler, an intern on the data infrastructure engineering team, out of a sample of 10 million Facebook connections retrieved from Facebook's data warehouse, Apache Hive. Butler color coded and weighted the connections on a blank canvas, accounting for longitude and latitude, and noticed a rough outline of the world emerged. "I was a bit taken aback by what I saw. The blob had turned into a surprisingly detailed map of the world. Not only were continents visible, certain international borders were apparent as well. What really struck me, though, was knowing that the lines didn't represent coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships," Butler wrote on a Facebook page. But despite boasting 500 million users worldwide, the map exposes some glaring holes in places you'd expect: China and Russia are completely missing, as are large chunks of the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Don't assume it's entirely due to government blocks; Facebook just isn't the most popular social network in many of these countries. Brazilians and Indians usually turn to Google's Orkut, Saudis use Maktoob, Russians use VKontakte, and the Chinese opt for QQ;com. As Fast Company's Cliff Huang notes, a similar, more detailed visualization of Facebook friendships has also been rendered by non-Facebook employee Pete Warden. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Gift guide: Economical gifts teachers want - Dallas Morning News Posted: 14 Dec 2010 07:45 AM PST TO This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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