The above are a series of data visualizations for my Twitter account showing some of the types of traffic that one can expect there. I find Twitter especially useful for listening, hearing that back chatter that sometimes revolves around a subject. Sometimes you connect here as opposed to other place and it can be quite meaningful. A data visualization will help you see where that information falls down in clusters. Who is connected to who? All that sort of jazz.
The above are Facebook visualizations from a now defunct service, apparently. Either way, interesting to note in Facebook how groups are formed. I can see my Korean friends, work friends, hometown friends, college friends and more forming here with minimal overlap. Quite interesting. I think the whole experience has made me miss a few people, but that is a post for another day.
This is amazing! I love, love, love stuff like this. I’m always wondering about the connections between things and the way things overlap and come together, but I’m usually left confounded by the numbers. Interesting, thanks! ^^
Pure numbers are useless for me as well. Data visualizations are really big things in my sphere of work now. It draws some really concrete and distinct groupings and patterns. A few I have to recommend to you:
1. Wordle-do a chat session with a class and feed the text into Wordle to see a visualization of what they were talking about. Really fascinating.
2. Data for Research (dfr.jstor.org)- shameless plug, but I simply love this thing. Draws on all the data in JSTOR (5.4 million articles, 400 years) creatively. Totally open and free.
Thanks Melissa! Hope Daejon is treating you well!