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Created by Paul Butler, an intern on Facebook’s data infrastructure engineering team, he writes:
“Visualizing data is like photography. Instead of starting with a blank canvas, you manipulate the lens used to present the data from a certain angle.”
I really like the way the above was articulated. And what a gorgeous visualization of Facebook’s interactions data. Such a powerful visualization, an example that a picture is truly worth a thousand words. And while the data has been manipulated (meaning it is biased) there is so much good information that can be told from this:
- High-tech, open regions; such as Europe, USA, India, parts of South America, Israel, Japan and Oceania;
- High-tech, closed regions, such as China — wow, totally dark; it is pretty sad;
- Africa overall, still not as connected as the rest of the world due to a combination of isolated regions, and low technology penetration (due to economic and political issues). Same with parts of South America;
- Low density population regions such as right in the middle of Australia or Alaska or the Amazon;
- Regions with oppressive and closed governments such as China and Cuba and Iran and close by regions, all dark;
- Relationships between regions and cities;
- How human interactions shape the state of the world!
Very cool, exciting stuff…
I would love to see a chart like this one, but from the mobile perspective; to visualize how mobile is driving human connections around the world.
You can read more at Facebook’s Visualizing Friendships.
ceo
I think the darker areas may indicate places where Facebook alternatives have made greater inroads. For example, I believe that Orkut has really taken off in Brazil.
What is also interesting is that often in these plots you see a number of false datapoints in the middle of the oceans, where east and west longitude have been specified incorrectly, and also a number of points at 0/0 lat/long. These seem to be filtered out.
The gap in the US/Canada western border is odd and well-defined.
Hi Sean. I am sure there is some of that, but such blackness I am afraid is a result of a much larger force, such as economic, political or just plain lack of population density in those particular areas.
ceo
yes it is a fact that Orkut is more popular in Brazil than facebook, but even so there is a lot of users migrating to facebook, either because is becoming trendy now to have a facebook account in Brazil specially after the movie which shows a Brazilian as a co-founder but I think what our dear ceo means is like in the Amazon region nobody will access neither facebook or orkut or even google itself just because the population density in that region is very low such as deserts in australia such places all over the world while in china is the very most populated county in the entire world and even so you will get a dark matter cloud over their data stats.