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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."
Due to the high number of links to such sites within, Slashdot is incredibly close to sites such as goatse.cx and tubgirl.
OK, so if I run that on my email inbox, I guess it'll tell me I have some long-running business relationships with penis enlargement companies, herbal viagra distributors, and various shady people in Nigeria...
This
In a recent (i believe 2 months ago) Dr. Dobbs there was an article about just this type of application. There was an article written by one of the top social enginners of applications like this. He was one of the people responsible for doing the Amazon "like this you'd like that" feature.
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.
New Social-Network Mapping Tools Compared
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)
mogorific carpentry experiments
I rest my case:
"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
This raises a serious question: What is this "IBM" and what kind of "project" are they planning?
Thank you Roland for the write-up on InFlow on your weblog!
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