

The social graph of the whole US - petewarden
http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how-to-split-up-the-us.html

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derefr
> it doesn't look like Washingtonians are big travelers compared to the rest
> of the West

Add edges into Canada to the graph. Half the tourists here in Vancouver on a
normal year (i.e. not this one) are from Seattle.

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marssaxman
I was pleased to see that the notion of a "Cascadian" cultural region is
actually visible in his data.

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marciovm123
This is some awesome data - I bet we'll be seeing a bunch of social science
PhDs based on data sets like these in the next 1-5 years. It will be really
interesting to see how this social graph evolves with time, and what it can
predict about things like migration, the economy, and the nature of our
relationships.

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nandemo
And then there's this weird group of people who don't use Facebook at all. Or
so I've heard.

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jknupp
FYI, the Mormon -> Twilight relationship is due to the fact that the author of
the series is Mormon.

~~~
cookiecaper
The same goes for Glenn Beck -- he's the favorite commentator in the group
because he's Mormon too.

~~~
kylemathews
Also Mormons tend to be conservative and Glenn Beck is one of the most popular
conservative commentators.

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ojbyrne
I'm curious about how the data was gathered.

~~~
mhansen
Possibly using this trick to request the JSON friendlist of any user that
surfaced a week ago?

[http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4726/view-
faceboo...](http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4726/view-facebook-
friend-list-hidden-or-not-hidden)

[EDIT]: Looks like the data was scraped from publicly available profiles:
<http://fanpageanalytics.com/about.php>

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hga
Wow, this is really fascinating, and I can confirm that Missouri, or at least
my south-west part of it, indeed belongs to "Greater Texas". I think that's
also true for Louisiana as well, which is where my mom is from.

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cookiecaper
C. Etzel Pearcy, some professor from some place, drafted up this concept in
the 70s to resituate the States into better social groups and to allow more
even representation.

Map: <http://i.imgur.com/Uway1.jpg>

Descriptions:
[http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2006/09/10/5-the-38-state-u...](http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2006/09/10/5-the-38-state-
union/) <http://www.tjc.com/38states/>

~~~
nostrademons
I've also seen maps where it's split into 9 nations:

[http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=...](http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5792131&mesg_id=5794073)

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zzleeper
Really nice work.. thanks for the post!

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CloudDeveloper
Is it ironic that Socialistan is nearing bankruptcy?

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jfarmer
It's Socalistan, like SoCal.

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philwelch
Oh jeez, I read it as "Socialistan" as well. Odd.

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hga
Hmmm, until I looked closely based on this thread, I too read it as
Socialistan. That says more about us than the author, who named is Socal...
because "LA is definitely the center of gravity for this cluster."

~~~
Groxx
Not really. "Social" is a word, the entire article is about a social network,
and it's seen probably a hundred times a day. "SoCal", especially when not
internally capitalized, is not something most people encounter every day.

We see it more because we see it more, and "li" in a sans seriffed font is
very difficult to correctly parse, so we read it as we see it at a glance,
which defaults to a word we know.

edit: socali socali social socali social social socali social (read it as
quickly as you read this, and tell me which there were more of)

~~~
philwelch
It probably doesn't help that, while "Socal" is associated with LA in our
consciousness, "socialism" is also associated with California, in the sense
that California is a leftish, high-tax state. I certainly didn't agree with
the appraisal of CA as socialist, but I've heard it so often that the
confusion of parsing neologisms like "Socalistan" led me fairly readily to the
assumption that this guy was making a political statement.

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slapshot
Interesting idea, but were the somewhat derogatory names really necessary? It
seems the best way to describe people is to start by not insulting them.

~~~
petewarden
Sorry if they come across as offensive, I was aiming for whimsical[1]. The one
I worried most about was Dixie, since I'm a foreigner and know I might miss
some of the historical subtleties.

[1] Well, apart from calling Seattle boring, that was deliberate

~~~
potatolicious
> _"[1] Well, apart from calling Seattle boring, that was deliberate"_

Care to shed some light on this? I'm in Seattle right now and I too find it
incredibly dull (today was a rare exception) - was wondering what your
experiences were with this town.

~~~
petewarden
Just a joke aimed at my friends in Seattle. They're just so damn nice they
might as well be Canadian.

