The Politics of Systems

Since I have started to play around with the latest (and really great, easy to use) version of the gephi graph visualization and analysis platform, I have developed an obsession to build .gdf output (.gdf is a graph description format that you can open with gephi) into everything I come across. The latest addition is a Facebook application called netvizz that creates a .gdf file describing either your personal network or the groups you are a member of.

There are of course many applications that let you visualize your network directly in Facebook but by being able to download a file, you can choose your own visualization tool, play around with it, select and parameter layout algorithms, change colors and sizes, rearrange by hand, and so forth. Toolkits like gephi are just so much more powerful than Flash toys…

my puny facebook network - gephi can process much larger graphs

What’s rather striking about these Facebook networks is how much the shape is connected to physical and social mobility. If you look at my network, you can easily see the Klagenfurt (my hometown) cluster to the very right, my studies in Vienna in the middle, and my French universe on the left. The small grape on the top left documents two semesters of teaching at the American University of Paris…

Update: v0.2 of netvizz is out, allowing you to add some data for each profile. Next up is GraphML and Mondrian file support, more data for profiles, etc…

Update 2: netvizz currently only works with http and not https. I will try to move the app to a different server ASAP.

Post filed under social networks, softwareproject.