

Facebook intern visualizes friendships, draws world map - psawaya
http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/visualizing-friendships/469716398919

======
Loic
Someone outside Facebook tried to do the same with a US map and was sued by
Facebook. Data in, data out only for Facebook.

[http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how-
to-s...](http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how-to-split-up-
the-us.html)

~~~
Retric
I think FB disliked his map because it showed how poor the connections between
areas where. FB's map pretends that all areas are equal and focuses on the
global nature of their network.

~~~
sudont
No, I believe it was because he tried to publish his dataset. As Loic said,
"Data out only for Facebook."

The worst part of the whole debacle was that Facebook's robots.txt file
explicitly allowed the crawling of this data.

~~~
Retric
I don't think your reading into the situation deep enough. FB changed their
robots.txt file becaue they reolized they wanted to keep that information
private. But, what caused them to want to make it private?

Well the reality is: _Looking at the network of US cities, it's been
remarkable to see how groups of them form clusters, with strong connections
locally but few contacts outside the cluster._

vs this PR peice that says:

 _It's not just a pretty picture, it's a reaffirmation of the impact we have
in connecting people, even across oceans and borders._

PS: _Visualizing data is like photography. Instead of starting with a blank
canvas, you manipulate the lens used to present the data from a certain
angle._ aka, To make something with the right look takes not just data but the
correct manipulations of that data.

------
xentronium
If you're interested: Russia is missing because we've got one _very_ similar
social network[1][2] that's got arguably more features and arrived to the
market a year or so earlier than facebook got its russian localization.

[1] <http://vk.com>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vkontakte>

~~~
ugh
I’m pretty sure that this is a development that happened all over the World.
Germany had its own Facebook clone [1] early on and it absolutely dominated
before Facebook entered the German market [2]. That’s now no more the case.

To quote StudiVZ CEO Riedl: “There is now no more direct battle against the
global player Facebook.” [3]

It’s interesting to see that the Facebook clone worked in Russia but didn’t in
other places.

[1] StudiVZ: <http://www.studivz.net/>

[2] StudiVZ was founded in November 2005 (a whole year earlier than
Vkontakte), Facebook was localized in early 2008

[3] A week ago, in an interview (German):
[http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/it-medien/studivz-
ch...](http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/it-medien/studivz-chef-clemens-
riedl-es-gibt-keinen-kampf-gegen-facebook-mehr;2706777;0)

~~~
xentronium
That's an interesting case. I might make some wild guesses based on what I
see:

1\. vk ports features from fb 3 to 6 months after they appear (share-widget,
like-widget, connect-widget, possible friends)

2\. vk's got a comprehensive search engine with lots of filters by age, city,
gender, current status (married, single, in active search etc.). Lots of
people I know use vk for dating. I might be missing something, but I didn't
find such a thing for facebook.

3\. vk's got _native_ music and video upload. By native I mean that you don't
use any third party application/service to do this. Everything's hosted on
vk's servers. That's the reason copyright owners sued vk several times (RIAA
even blacklisted the guys). However, they [copyright holders] lost in all the
court cases.

4\. VK offers _cheap_ contextual ads. While not exactly a killer feature, it
is very nifty for business, -- they only charge per-click and if you get the
targeting and ad text right, you'll get more visitors than you need.

5\. Another random guess is that it's easier for a German than for a Russian
to migrate to English service.

~~~
pmjordan
_5\. Another random guess is that it's easier for a German than for a Russian
to migrate to English service._

In principle, Facebook is localised. I could imagine that few apps are
translated to German though, and even fewer to Russian, except those built by
native developers; (I don't use any apps, so I don't know) that native
developer pool ought to be the same as the one building VK (or VZ) apps.
Assuming Facebook does a decent job of filtering localised apps, I can't
imagine this to be a massive issue for users.

I can only assume the media upload is what keeps people coming back.

All of the other reasons you mention seem to be reasons why businesses would
prefer VK over Facebook, but surely it's the _users_ that are the key?

~~~
edanm
"I can only assume the media upload is what keeps people coming back."

People keep coming back because that's where their friends are.

~~~
ugh
See, that’s what I would have thought about StudiVZ and yet Facebook could
spread in Germany like a wildfire. StudiVZ still has millions of users but
Facebook has those same users, too. (This is only anecdotal evidence but
Facebook also seems like the busier place to me, activity has transitioned
from StudiVZ to Facebook.)

This tells me that even if a social network seems to have a particular market
cornered, a competitor still has a chance. (Which, I think, is quite nice to
know.) Network effects are obviously important and have to be considered by
anyone who wants to build a social network but I think there are certain
properties of social networks that dampen network effects: Signing up is easy
and free, for one, and rebuilding the social graph, while some work, is far
from tedious. You only have to add some friends and recommendations get you
the rest of the way.

~~~
ZoFreX
It might be just a Russian phenomenon. Are there any other countries where
Google is not the dominant search engine?

~~~
count
Baidu-Baidu in China.

~~~
jarek
And for a bit of a non-obvious one, Seznam in the Czech Republic.

~~~
marchdown
I wonder if Seznam really is more popular than Google in ČR. Do you have any
data to support this? Also I wonder what the deal is with Jyxo.cz. How much
behind Seznam is it nowadays? Wasn't it technically superior?

~~~
jarek
My citation for the Seznam claim is "I read it on English Wikipedia". I have
no idea if it's accurate. Sorry.

------
nostromo
_backgroundify!_ (removed branding, resized to 1920x1200):
<http://s3.amazonaws.com/fb-world-image/fb-worldmap.jpg>

The US / Canadian border in the West is interesting. It seems between west of
the great lakes and east of Seattle there isn't much connection across the
border.

~~~
patrickaljord
zoomed <http://zoom.it/9qx1>

~~~
dedward
Could just be a graphing anomaly, or that there aren't many people living on
either side of the border in those areas.

~~~
btilly
I've been in that area. I think it is real.

It is a lot easier to move around and work on one side of the border or the
other, which leads to people naturally not meeting people on the other side.

In the east there are so many more people and there is so much cross border
traffic due to trade (particularly from the auto industry) that a lot more
cross border connections exist.

~~~
foenix
I've been to the Eastern part of the border: Stanstead, Quebec/Vermont. Over
there, some of the buildings are right on the border. One of the guys I worked
with lived in apartments which had their parking lot technically in the US.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanstead,_Quebec#Geography>

Check out the library:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_Free_Library_and_Opera_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_Free_Library_and_Opera_House)

<http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,948520,00.html>

As for the west coast, let's not forget about the geographical anomaly known
as "Point Roberts":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts#Geography>

------
aonic
It's the same Paul Butler that posted about A/B testing a CV
[http://paulbutler.org/archives/experiment-in-testing-my-
resu...](http://paulbutler.org/archives/experiment-in-testing-my-resume/)

~~~
dezwald
I wonder if google found him by posting this A/B Resume test.

~~~
ianbishop
You mean Facebook?

------
DrJokepu
It's really interesting that you can clearly see the differences between West
Germany from East Germany, even 20 years after the reunification. Also the
borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 80 years after the end of the World
War I.

I also wonder who those users in North Korea are.

~~~
trafficlight
Those are all Kim Jong-il

~~~
varjag
Kim Jong Il is friend to all Korean people, but the map does not reflect that?

~~~
sabon
He is a true friend to all those Koreans. But the map only shows those who
have computers. AND access to internet. Which would be his family, government
and more or less that's it. The rest would love to show their friendship and
devotion to Kim but can't - lack of computers is killing them...

------
brlewis
What I want to know is, were the 10MM pairs all people who make their
friendship data public? For people in urban areas, this is sufficiently
anonymous. But for those faint dots in the middle of nowhere, is it?

I think very carefully before I reveal any information publicly about my
users. Sometimes seemingly aggregate information isn't.

------
DanielN
Seems to comply pretty well with this <http://www.vincos.it/world-map-of-
social-networks/>

Notice the conspicuous absence of China, Russia and Brazil.

~~~
hyperbovine
Why auspicious?

~~~
DanielN
Because I'm an idiot and meant conspicuous. I'll be editing that now.

------
acgourley
Am I reading it right? R generated that?

~~~
chunkbot
You're surprised? Why?

~~~
gloob
I can't speak for the poster you're responding to, but if it's easy to make
things that pretty in R, I suddenly want to learn it.

------
treyp
the lack of china is pretty interesting. russia is practically non-existent
too, but it's much larger (especially with this map projection) with a much
smaller population.

~~~
Yahivin
The lack of China on the map was interesting to me as well. I believe that
Facebook being blocked in China has quite a bit to do with it.

~~~
smokinn
Not really. The real reason is 2 letters long: QQ

EDIT: To explain and not be snarky, QQ is an IM/portal/social network/web
mail/social game platform that is actually larger than Facebook. (Over 600
million active last I checked.) They completely dominate every aspect of
Chinese web software.

~~~
mousa
There would be many more using Facebook if it wasn't blocked. I'm not sure how
it's doing now but I remember lots of students last year were joining xiaonei
which is just a facebook duplicate for Chinese students only.

IMO many of these sites are blocked in China so Chinese companies can dominate
the domestic market rather than for political reasons.

------
moe
How about a real hi-res version, or a vectorized version, or dare I dream, the
raw data?

This looks pretty, but it'd be more interesting to me if I could explore it
some.

------
galapagos
All that dark may be attributed to numerous things as alluded to already: lack
of development, lack of human settlement, poverty, simply not on fb

The border region between the Canadian prairie provinces and the American
plains may be because the cities aren't smack against the border as in
BC/WASH. or Ontario/NY etc.

The few dots in NK could be those few expats or SK/foreign tourists, or NK
operatives logging in. NK does have a twitter account.

Anyway, the map is stunning and i think its a great visual of the
inequalities, especially between Africa and the global North. It might also
highlight the irrelevance of fb in regions where community (not the same as
digitized "communication") is more necessary, strong and relevant to the life
and survival mechanisms therein than costly technologies elsewhere.

~~~
jonknee
> The few dots in NK could be those few expats or SK/foreign tourists, or NK
> operatives logging in. NK does have a twitter account.

It's not based on IP, but based on self-stated resident city.

~~~
galapagos
ah, thanks. i guess we can exclude tourists then. could also be fans of the
regime from outside of the country.. who knows.

------
Knack
Interesting. In Germany you can still distinct clearly the former eastern
part, which has less facebook activity. You see the 'island' of Berlin,
though. For your informaion: The union of Germany was 20 years ago...

Anyway, I'm not a fan of facebook, google and the like, as it's not obvious
that the consumer pays the big bill in the end. People think of great, free
services but all the billions those company make come secretly from our
pockets. (Via created consumer trends, higher prices that other companies can
take due to the consumer information they buy from facebook)

------
bambax
Weird: Sardinia is much brighter than Corsica (density for Corsica (34 hab.
per km2) is about half the density of Sardinia (70 hab. per km2), so I guess
that explains it?)

Weirder: Portugal (11M people, 114 hab. per km2) is much brighter than Spain
(44M people, 93 hab. per km2): the difference in density does not seem to
explain the difference on the map. Are Spaniards less social than the
Portuguese?

~~~
jkent
In Spain, Tuenti is considerably more popular (Spanish equivalent of
Facebook). This probably explains the density difference.

------
k3dz
this might not represent "real human relationships".. people playing games
like mafia wars (45 million users) keep adding hundreds of other players as
friends..

------
ndunn2
Nice piece of data visualization there. +1 for using great circles instead of
straight lines.

------
Vivtek
Looks a little like that brief orbital shot of the Borg future Earth, doesn't
it?

~~~
oz
Or the Taelon Commonality, for Earth, Final Conflict fans.

------
cma
Brazil is almost totally dark; Orkut effect?

~~~
Vivtek
I'm pretty sure that's just the Amazon.

~~~
nandemo
It's both effects. If we had an Orkut map it would be like this but with the
brightness much amplified. The coast and the South would be as bright as (say)
Mexico.

------
sundars
Its interesting to see many connections within India. Also India and countries
in Western Asia seem more connected than India and US (which is what I was
expecting assuming the FB population in India)

~~~
sundarurfriend
>Its interesting to see many connections within India.

The map is quite predictable to some extent too. Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata are
clearly visible, and I think I see Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai as well,
albeit as less brighter dots. Bangalore not being a bright dot is curious in
itself - is it that people here are more networked with other cities and
countries rather than within the city?

>Also India and countries in Western Asia seem more connected than India and
US (which is what I was expecting assuming the FB population in India)

How do you see something like that? I found it pretty difficult to keep track
of the lines. If that were true, it would be pretty interesting indeed.

~~~
sundars
i see some bright lines between indian cities esp mumbai and the gulf region.

btw, i wonder who you are....as you are also a Sundar

------
clofresh
Beautiful. This belongs in the MoMA.

------
paganel
It's interesting how sub-Saharan Africa is still a mostly dark continent. Also
interesting are the connections between the Kurds from Turkey and those from
present-day Iraq, and how people from Baghdad are still more or less connected
to those from the northern parts of Iraq (there's still a major Sunni presence
in there as far as I know).

------
chrisaycock
Really shows how entrenched the established players are in the emerging
markets. Russia has VK (VKontakte), China has QQ (and supposedly blocks FB
too), Brazil has Orkut. Makes me kind of admire Facebook for being able to
take so much market share in Western Europe, despite home-grown alternatives
there.

------
ch
Neat. It is interesting how similar this rendering is to Chris Harrison's
city-to-city map:
[http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/medium/wor...](http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/medium/worldBlack.jpg)

------
gills
I think the giant bright line through central Mexico into Arizona is pretty
funny.

~~~
jacobolus
That "giant bright line" tracks along the coastline of the Pacific Ocean/Gulf
of California. Why is it funny? There is a major highway there, and many
populous cities along the shore. As you go inland a ways there is a giant
desert and then a giant mountain range – it seems reasonable that such areas
are thus less populated. Many parts of that map have "giant bright lines"
along coastlines (for example, Spain, Australia, northwest Africa).

------
matylda
Were it possible to gather the data, it'd be interesting to see a breakdown of
how the connections were made. I'm curious whether more were a result of
travel/temporary visits or relocation/permanent moves.

------
dshankar
They don't use Facebook in Russia?

Jokes aside, this is an amazing marketing/hiring tool for Facebook. I hope
they print this on billboards.

------
sachbh
why use euclidean distance in the function for defining weights? Doesn't it
mean cities that are farther in distance with fewer friend connections would
get a higher weight than cities that are close by? Not sure how it helps
visualize or how to interpret it.

~~~
jcl
Presumably they're using euclidean distance to scale _down_ the brightness of
long-distance links -- to ensure that long-distance relationships don't
overpower short ones in the visualization. Otherwise, a pair of friends
thousands of miles apart would be contributing the same "energy" to the image
as a thousand pairs a few miles apart... You'd never be able to see local
detail in the areas heavily crossed by global connections (e.g. the
Caribbean).

------
siculars
Russians don't use Facbook.

edit. I love this map. China and Russia are black holes.

------
yuxt
looks familiar [http://www.masterresource.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/12/ear...](http://www.masterresource.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/12/earth_night.jpg)

------
loganlinn
It would be interesting to see this with full spectral progression

------
Aetius
Oh, China, you are so dark...

------
mangool
So beautiful

------
davidk0101
So where's Kevin Bacon?

------
dfischer
This is really amazing. Nice!

