New Social-Network Mapping Tools Compared 79
Roland Piquepaille writes "There are many new visualization tools around us which try to map our social networks. In this column, I examined Inflow, a datamining tool digging through your email repository to discover and find trends to know more about your networks. Here is a quote: "Assuming you have a significant amount of e-mail traffic, the software will create a remarkably sophisticated assessment of your various social groups, showing you not only their relative size but also the interactions between different groups." I also peeked at TouchGraph GoogleBrowser, which uses Amazon or Google Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to visually describe how books and Web sites connect with one another. Finally, I took a look at a brand new way of visualizing Google search results, from anacubis. If you know about other similar new tools, please tell me and I'll gather your comments in a future story."
Interestingly (Score:5, Funny)
My social groups... (Score:2)
Spammers? (Score:5, Funny)
Possibly (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Possibly (Score:1)
But you wouldn't run it on one inbox (Score:5, Insightful)
If a tool like this is intended to be anywhere remotely useful, it would look at incoming and outgoing emails. Two people that have no two-way communication would, I imagine, be rather unconnected.
Finally, running this on the email inbox of a single person would be quite useless. You'd get a hub with spokes coming out. Whee. The real purpose of something like this is when you can run it on a massive collection of everyone's email throughout an organization. At this point, it starts to become a bit of a privacy issue. I mean, people on Slashdot scream horribly when the FBI thinks about doing something like this, but the moment the local network admin (someone who I in general would far *less* rather have digging through my email, and who I personally feel has much less right to do so) starts running social analysis software, it's okay because it's "neat". Sigh.
Re:But you wouldn't run it on one inbox (Score:1)
Re:Spammers? (Score:1)
Instant Messenging / Chats (Score:2)
apparently my social network (Score:3, Funny)
my social group (Score:2)
After analyzing my email, I have determined that my social group is comprised of a large number of penis enlargement professionals.
GF.
POV-Picture style. (Score:1, Insightful)
Dr. Dobbs article about this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dr. Dobbs article about this (Score:5, Funny)
People who buy this item also buy...
Really? I buy clean undewear??? And I always thought it was weird until I heard about this [ebay.com]...
Having lots of "visual brain cells" != usefulness (Score:5, Insightful)
Erm, no offense, but I don't think A necessarily follows B here. Putting abstract constructs in visual terms doesn't automatically overcome the fact that you're still dealing with abstract constructs.
Re:Having lots of "visual brain cells" != usefulne (Score:3, Interesting)
Network mapping via Google (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, this seems to be a next step in the evolution of search engines, not giving URLs that matches queries, but relating them, showing the relationship between actual data and ubication in internet.
Re:Network mapping via Google (Score:1)
download?? (Score:1)
The most important questions... (Score:5, Funny)
1) How will this prevent spam?
and
2) How will it stop terrorism?
As soon as it stops spam and terrorism, I'm ready to invest.
Re:The most important questions... (Score:5, Funny)
"Intelligence analysts once assumed that terrorists organize in isolated cells. But social-network maps revealed that the 9/11 hijackers' cells morphed into a hub-and-spoke pattern with an obvious leader: Mohammed Atta. The active structure resembled that of an IBM project team." from discover.com [discover.com]
This raises a serious question: What is this "IBM" and what kind of "project" are they planning?
Re:The most important questions... (Score:5, Funny)
"As soon as it stops spam and terrorism, I'm ready to invest."
I'm not buying it until it supports the Ogg format.
Re:The most important questions... (Score:2, Informative)
Social Mapping for Geeks (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, come on. This is Slashdot!
Some great technology and concepts exist within social-network mapping tools, but really it's totally useless to us geeks. Our social maps are built up like this:
Computer <--(attachment)--> Geek
Some of the slightly more warped geeks here have it like this:
Wife <--(guardian/moderator)--> Computer
|
| (controlled via sex)
|
V
Chump (a.k.a. geek)
n degrees of separation (Score:1)
Then again, most people will probably have a connection to Nigeria due to the certain organ-lengthening drug that they are so famous for.
Re:n degrees of separation (Score:2)
Hum, the hypothesis that everybody knows everybody else within 6 degrees of separation.
Clearly, this is false because some people know no others.
Tor
Re:n degrees of separation (Score:2)
but in any case, many networks have a high degree of connectivity, and because some individuals know many many people, e
Free software equivalent to InFlow? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Free software equivalent to InFlow? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free software equivalent to InFlow? (Score:1)
Re:Free software equivalent to InFlow? (Score:4, Informative)
http://marki.host.sk/MLS/
This looks great (Score:4, Funny)
On second thought, maybe I don't want to visualize that...
Do you really need it ? (Score:2)
Heh! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Heh!-"Unemployed" singularity. (Score:1, Funny)
Damn you, Slashdot! (Score:1)
Interesting stuff, I wonder if there is any benefit in assigning values to (a) the length of replies, and (b) whether communication is one way or two way. The president of my company writes to me (well, and everyone else) once a week, but I don't reply! In a large organisation it would be useful, but not nice, to link email based analysis in with phone calls, meeting attendances, and so on.
Social networks... (Score:2, Interesting)
Does this mean, perhaps, that ... (Score:1)
Seriously -- this seems to be the aim of so many developments, to "help make the world a better place via this-and-that," but as an engineer -- and also a human being -- living in these times, it's sometimes hard to really believe that we are improving things on a human level.
So if technology is developed that can actually help people identify with themselves and others, if software can assist in
how... (Score:2)
Re:how... (Score:3, Insightful)
Non Obvious Relational awareness (Score:4, Informative)
This was a truly scary demonstration of this kind of technology being used by private industry, namely casinos, to track relationships between people.
Real stream available at: rtsp://media-1.datamerica.com/blackhat/bh-usa-02/v ideo/BH-USA-02-JEFF-JONAS.rm
A few factual errors in original blog entry (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately there are some errors...
1) I am not a former IBM'er... they were my first major client.
2) It did not take me 15 years to write the software... the first working version [w/o visuals] was written in 2 weekends in 1987... on a 512K Macintosh... using Prolog. Yes, now it is commercial, used mostly by management consultants, on Windows. I also use it with VPC6 on my Powerbook.
3) InFlow can process data from email traffic to find patterns and paths, but the paragraph you quote is about the OTHER product in the article -- MIT Media Lab's "Social Network Fragments" -- a very cool tool.
Looking at just your own email[in/out] will not tell you much [except that it is 40% spam]. You need to look at the email flows between project team members, co-workers, communities of interest, etc. At least 20 participants before interesting patterns emerge...
Most of our data is collected via on-line surveys -- people participate knowingly. Most survey participants are very eager to see the resulting maps -- they want to see where they, and their friends ended up.
Valdis
download? (Score:1)
FYI: /. Links provided, last one on terrorist net (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.orgnet.com/ [orgnet.com]
http://www.anacubis.com/index.html [anacubis.com]
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html [touchgraph.com]
http://www.smartmobs.com/index.html [smartmobs.com]
http://smg.media.mit.edu/projects/SocialNetworkFra gments/ [mit.edu]
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_4/krebs/ [firstmonday.dk]
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_camero n030703.asp [technologyreview.com]
Antispam applications? (Score:4, Insightful)
In any case, it's another way to look at spam protection.
My social network apparently consists of.. (Score:1)
Check out this clustering search engine (Score:2)
Not sure exactly what they use but it was fun to see how this new engine Vivisimo [vivisimo.com] grouped both very broad topics and specific ones. Put your name in and see what it brings up and how it classifies it. Might be interesting.
Google+Blogger=Go_Ogle, SocNet Search For Dates (Score:3, Insightful)
Google+Blogger is an ideal combination for serving this market.
Here's how I think Go_Ogle will happen:
Soon, Google will improve the searchability of "blogspace" by making it easy for bloggers to annotate their blogs with information about themselves and their blogger friends. This information will be encoded in an RDF dialect called FOAF (Friend of a Friend).
It will then dawn on people that the FOAF file is effectively a static online profile, while the associated blog is akin to a living profile (in the 'living document' sense).
With this, Googling people will come to encompass both researching people you have met -- already a common practice -- and researching people you would like to meet.
The upside potential of this, as introduced above, will prove too substantial for IPO-bound Google to ignore. (In addition, I believe leadership of the market for online matchmaking software is the gateway to early leadership of the market for lifelong learning and career services, which will be worth hundreds of trillions of dollars in the coming decades. Toward understanding the relationship between the two markets, consider: according to a recent American Demographics survey, couples in the U.S. meet primarily at work (36%) or school (27%). More on 'online dating software -> LLCS' here [opportunityservices.com]).
Google will then acquire the best makers of RDF query tools and launch Go_Ogle, the mother of all online dating sites.
Why not do it in real time? (Score:3, Informative)
Etherape [sourceforge.net]
Can't believe the author left that one out.
Google needs a moderation system. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google needs a moderation system. (Score:1)
- jas.
Pajek (Score:2, Insightful)
I was inspired to mess with this a little at school after being inspired by the book _Linked_. It worked OK, and there was some literature about it on the web.
Finally, Finally, Finally (Score:1)
Texas with a budget crisis? (Score:1)
And, frell, I walk into the marble corridors of the business building and feel poor no matter what.
mlylecarlin
Cool way to visualize a thesaurus... (Score:1)
Do you? (Score:1)
Strange... (Score:2)