I’m quite involved into social network, social media and users’ profiling – and social behaviour interpretation – so I always check for content like infographics that sum up all valuable social media data – and don’t mess with useless details.
This time, it’s about social network visualizazion – that is, looking at networks with complex online tools that unveil a new dimension in social networks: artistic attitude and a graphical appeal you won’t deny.
Social networks are dynamic and constantly evolving. While we can easily identify our friends and acquaintances within a network, it’s much harder for us to comprehend how members in a social network are connected and how those connections influence a particular network.
Fortunately, there are now a number of people that have taken the time to create stunning visualizations of various social networks that give us a better understanding of how networks function. We take a look at our ten favourite visualizations of social networks.
Check this post to see 10 amazing social visualization, here are my 3 favourites.
Fidg’t’ : Visualize
The Fidg’t Visualizer allows you to play around with your network. You interface with the Visualizer through Flickr and LastFM tags, using any tag to create a Magnet. Once a Tag Magnet is created, members of the network will gravitate towards it if they have photos or music with that same Tag.
Wells Fargo
The image shows the 2 Step Network Environment of Wells Fargo, the second most influential actor in our Network Analysis of California’s Fortune 500 companies. We were interested which director interlock connections make Wells Fargo so powerful and how it is embedded in the greater California/ US industry. Director interlock shows how companies are connected with one another through their board of directors, i.e. Apple and Disney are connected through Steve Jobs. 2 Steps mean that directors on the board of Wells Fargo are connected to all companies displayed in a “friend of a friend” relation. This reveals compelling new insights and business opportunities.
OS Relationships
flowerGarden
flowerGarden is an web-based software application, produced in Flash, for real-time social network and conversation visualization. It was used at the 3-day Bodies in Play summit in Banff, May 2005, at which the 50 participants were invited to input information about who they spoke to and what they discussed during the duration of the event. The visualization was projected on a large screen in the main summit venue to reflect the current state of the social network and discussion space of the summit.
Many of the visualizations above can be found at the excellent Visual Complexity site.
As an added feature, check this StumbleUpon Top Users and their friends graph.
As simple as it may seem, it shows deep complexity in the relationship graph.
[Via Visual Complexity and SocialMediaTrader]