New Social-Network Mapping Tools Compared

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."

Comments

Having lots of "visual brain cells" != usefulness

[Captain Beefheart]

"Considering that more than two thirds of our brain cells are dedicated on vision, these tools make sense."

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.