Super sweet Tumblr of the Sunlight Foundation
Not on Facebook? Researchers Can Still Probe the “Shadow Network”
So. You’re not on Facebook - perhaps you’re concerned over their privacy policy, or just don’t want to be found and marketed to - but before you pat yourself in the back for being one of the holdouts, you should know that just because you’re not on Facebook, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t know about you.
Theoretically, of course.
![The Iranian Internet Repression Expressed in Infographics
The series of infographics titled “The Iranian Internet” [this-is-maral.com] by master student Maral Pourkazemi combines an aesthetic sense of (greyscale) infographics with the serious topic of international politics.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3rv58722r1qhn3smo1_1280.jpg)
The series of infographics titled “The Iranian Internet” [this-is-maral.com] by master student Maral Pourkazemi combines an aesthetic sense of (greyscale) infographics with the serious topic of international politics.
Doodling With a Conversation, or Retweet, Data Sketch Around LAK12
How can we represent conversations between a small sample of users, such as the email or SMS converstations between James Murdoch’s political lobbiest and a Government minister’s special adviser (Leveson inquiry evidence), or the pattern of retweet activity around a couple of heavily retweeted individuals using a particular hashtag?
Livehoods examines the way neighborhoods work in real life
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have analyzed foursquare check-ins to build a visualization of the way neighborhoods function in the real world. Livehoods provides a fascinating real-time look at the way neighborhoods really behave instead of the way they’re defined by the street grid, offering unique analysis possibilities for city planners and businesses.
Darwin’s Theory Pervades Twitter Too
via The Atlantic:
In a new paper entitled Competition Among Memes in a World With Limited Attention, Indiana University researchers Lillian Weng, Alessando Flammini, Alessando Vespignani, and Filippo Menczer analyzed 120 million retweets connected to 12.5 million users and 1.3 million hashtags in order to model how information (as discrete units, or memes) disperses on the social network.
What did they find? According to co-author Vespignani, having millions of followers does not denote an important message. Rather, the messages with the most immediate relevance tend to have a higher probability of resonating within a certain network than others. Think of it as “survival of the fittest” for information: those tweets that capture the most attention, whether related to a major geopolitical or news event or a particular interest, are likely to persist longer. This competition sounds bad, but it’s generally good for messages in general: thousands of tweets about Japan’s 2011 earthquake or the ongoing conflict in Syria don’t cancel each other out, but help refocus the attention of the wider Twitter audience on those issues, which in turn provides an added lift to individual messages over other off-topic ones.
The study reinforces what most journalists and marketers have known intuitively for some time now: that piggybacking on the trending ideas that constitute “the conversation” online maximizes the ability to spread tweet-sized ideas. Where people fit into preexisting networks certainly matters: Ashton Kutcher’s millions of followers represent a powerful hub of connections. But could Mr. Kutcher’s messages about Nikon’s new camera overwhelm hundreds of tweets about Trayvon Martin from hundreds of smaller, less-connected individuals? The research suggests that it doesn’t fully matter who you are or how many connections you have, but what you’re saying relative to the existing conversation is what really matters in spreading knowledge online.
FJP: Though not a shocking revelation, it does feel nice to see research support the power of Twitter.
Apparently I don’t share enough on Facebook. I’m going to look at that as a good thing.
Intel Creates Infographic Generator That’s All About You
Intel, which has catered to Facebook and Twitter users’ inherent narcissism before, is giving you a new tool for digital navel-gazing: an infographic that’s all about you.
![infographicsme:
All about Pinterest. I love how this infographic is made to look just like Pinterest. [by Modea]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzz0zrRSsR1r4tdy1o1_1280.png)
All about Pinterest. I love how this infographic is made to look just like Pinterest. [by Modea]
Best Friends: Designer Maps His Facebook Network, In 3-D Infographic
What does “friend” mean? It’s always been a slippery term, subtly changing through the ages. Even today, the word slips and slides between meanings. A young lawyer meets some friends for a drink, but she only sleeps with her boyfriend. There are some things she can only tell her best friend. As a donor, she is a friend of the museum. In court, she attacks the arguments of her learned friend. When she gets into politics, she’ll address a crowd of friends. She probably has hundreds of friends on Facebook.
Temporal patterns in London Twitter data
Inspired by a recent lecture from Fabian Neuhaus (UrbanTick), I have taken a week-long sample of around 20k geotagged tweets from London and produced a week/weekend temporal visualisation.
President Obama’s State of the Union: What were the most Tweet-worthy moments?As an awkward hush fell over the US Congress while President Obama was chuckling over (hypothetical) spilled milk, Twitter was on fire with people yucking it up at the president’s expense. Click the chart to see all the other highlights including some top tweets from both sides of the political spectrum.
a map of people in chicago going to work and then going home via their geotagged tweets (via gapersblock)
Is this the structure of Chicago? (by Eric Fischer)
Watching ‘wtf Wikipedia’ as SOPA/PIPA blackout begins
While SOPA and PIPA are no laughing matter (join the strike), the reaction from those on Twitter who don’t know what’s going on is great entertainment. Do a search on ‘wtf wikipedia’ for tweets from confused individuals who are trying to find information on stuff.
A couple of months ago, 24-year-old Austrian law student Max Schrems requested Facebook for all his personal data. The European arm of Facebook, based in Dublin, Ireland, was obliged to turn over this information, as they had to follow an European law that requires any entity to provide full access to data about an individual, should this individual personally request for it. Accordingly, Max received a CD containing about 1,222 pages (PDF files), including chats he had deleted more than a year ago, “pokes” dating back to 2008, invitations, and hundreds of other details.
