Using Facebook to Vizualize Networks

The below is from the Community Mobilization Blog:
(2/17/8; source: http://como.typepad.com/community_mobilization/social_network_software/index.html

"Thanks to Bill Ives for blogging about Touchgraph, a visualization tool for Facebook, Google, and a few other social sites. I absolutely love it! It is just an amazing way to organize the data trapped in the Facebook / social network system. Why? It helps you understand the underlying connectivity that exists in your existing network. Implicit connectivity is not always apparent but the way the touchgraph collated the connections make them visually apparent and easy to interpret and understand.

"Real double word-score will come when you are able to utilize the back-end data and research the points and interconnectivity of people NOT in your network. It sounds very big brother but the point is for marketing and social action leveraging this kind of application would do wonders for identifying central connectors. Now if you could only derive centrality and distance scores like you can get from more intensive systems like UCINet."

Networking for Productivity and Fulfillment

Our country is among the least productive of highly industrialized countries, at least by some measures. One reason may be because of our isolation from one another.

Many are beginning to recognize that, and are getting to work on it. For example:
http://como.typepad.com/community_mobilization/social_network_software/index.html

Networking Against Isolation and Lonliness

Compared to other countries, we are report more loneliness and feelings of isolation.

Some are trying to address that. For example: http://www.plan.ca/belong/2006_11_01_nurturebelonging_archive.html

Coming Soon... a chance to map our networks

At least I hope so. Ed Morrison's organization seems to offer a lot for creating more diverse and densely interconnected networks, which end up making the communities more able to marshal resources and respond to change. There's also evidence, perhaps not surprisingly, that those communities are healthy and happier. "Healthy, wealthy, and wise," and all we gotta do is connect the dots!