FaceBook Quiz
Following up on Brayden’s post, here’s my FB network, minus a few isolates:
The graph clumps into several connected subgroups. There’s family in Ireland, sociology types, philosophy types, and blogger types — these categories aren’t necessarily exclusive. An imaginary prize to the first commenter who can guess the identity of the node colored in green, who seems to be at the center of everything.
My guess is Greg Mankiw. That guy has something like four times as many friends as me!
Josh
February 26, 2009 at 4:55 pm
i’m thinking eszter hargittai because i’ve never met an academic who doesn’t know her and as such i tell her that her photo should be next to the entry for “structural hole” in the dictionary.
Gabriel Rossman
February 26, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Gabriel beat me too it. It has got to be Ezster.
Eric Schwartz
February 26, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Ding! Gabriel wins the imaginary prize and Eric the imaginary consolation prize. Too easy, really.
Kieran
February 26, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I don’t suppose there’s a special prize for ringing in third, and after the correct answer has been shown (even if it would have been my guess)? Is this what rubber chickens are for?
Jenn Lena
February 26, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I’ll give Jenn half of my imaginary consolation prize.
Eric Schwartz
February 26, 2009 at 5:24 pm
It’s my obvious Irish background that’s helped me attain this status.
Eszter
February 26, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Looks like many of you violate Dunbar’s Law. Maybe the Economist should have consulted you on how you do it.
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13176775&fsrc=rss
Mike McBride
February 26, 2009 at 7:56 pm
This app is so very fun. Now all we need is a way to collect a random sample of the networks and we would have a fantastic dataset. Unfortunately I have not even been able to convince my friends to let me generate a network for them.
Mikaila
February 26, 2009 at 8:30 pm
@Mikaila: Really? I posted my graph to my Facebook account and my friends immediately started asking me to make theirs. Which made me think that you could pretty easily get people to let you use their data in return for some pretty pictures. But maybe the difference in people’s willingness to reveal their network is interesting in itself.
Peter
February 26, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Just a quick concern. In his post, Brayden said, “Granted, Facebook networks don’t exactly map onto real world relationships (I see gaps in this network that don’t exist outside of Facebook) but, in general, the clusters seem to indicate real patterns of interaction.”
Peter now says, “I posted my graph to my Facebook account and my friends immediately started asking me to make theirs.”
This sounds like how astrology might have gotten started: Granted the stars don’t exactly map onto real world relationships, but, in general, the constellations seem to indicate real patterns of interaction. If they think you have some special insight into those patterns, people ask you to “make theirs”, i.e., their astrological chart.
Next step: people starting using the “pretty pictures” as ways of orienting themselves in their own social world, and, voila, the facebook network visualization has produced the patterns it was supposed to represent.
Thomas Basbøll
February 27, 2009 at 7:48 am
Silly me. I was going to guess Laurie. But now I think she’s the one linking the orderly rows (philosophy types?) to the isolated cluster (Irish relatives and buddies).
Erin
March 3, 2009 at 2:16 am
That’s right.
Kieran
March 3, 2009 at 2:57 am