Search This Blog

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Facebook Friendships Map the World


A ghostly image of social networking on the internet

Facebook intern Paul Butler has created this amazing map in an effort to picture where facebook friends live, relative to each other.

Each thread connects pairs of friends, and the brighter the line, the more pairs there are.

The surprisingly accurate outline of the continents and islands was entirely unexpected -- as Paul himself declared in a blog post on his facebook page, where he also reveals how he went about creating this mindbending picture of an internet-using globe.

Note that China and Russia are largely invisible, a hint of government suppression of social networking, perhaps?

No comments: