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Facebook Person Map

 Visually mapping social connections
  (+5, -1)
(+5, -1) 		  [vote for,
against]

I find myself curious to know how a random person on Facebook is connected to me. Let's call this random person 'Bob'. For example:

Bob -> Susan -> John -> Victor

...might be the shortest path from Bob to me through our connections. There might be more than one equivalent shortest path:

Bob -> Susan -> Peter -> Victor

What about all the more complicated ways that Bob and I are connected? Surely if there is a four-person path, there is likely to be a five-person or ten-person path as well.

Bob -> Harold -> Nancy -> Megan -> Lucy -> etc -> etc -> Victor

I propose a mapping software that will generate a visual map of these not-so-close-friend connections, similar to the Opte project (see link). The more direct paths could be brighter in order to indicate their importance.

Thoughts?

—victor, Apr 14 2010

Opte Project http://www.opte.org/maps/
a visual representation of the Internet [victor, Apr 14 2010]

[link]






       You wouldn't have the rights to explore these links unless you were friends with everyone involved.
—Aristotle, Apr 14 2010
   

       @Aristotle - the vast majority of people on Facebook have their Friends list open to the world.
—victor, Apr 15 2010
   

       Can application or game trawl these friends links on facebook without any additional permission? I suppose this could be done with an external server if Facebook decided to tolerate it.
—Aristotle, Apr 15 2010
   

       I love this kind of stuff (probably cos I like playing with Flash). There's no reason you couldn't build a facebook app that could map your own network in 2D, 3D, 4D, whatever. Great project.
—wagster, Apr 15 2010
   

       //The more direct paths could be brighter in order to indicate their importance.//

Just out of interest, why do you think that the direct path is more important than the indirect one?
—DrBob, Apr 15 2010
   
      
[annotate]
   


 

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