Via Facebook
Facebook's out with a new data visualization that maps all the Facebook friend connections in the world, and naturally, Mark Zuckerberg has the image set as the cover photo on his profile.
Despite being unashamedly self-promotional, it’s a pretty cool effect, intended to make the world seem small and interconnected. Which it does, mostly.
The map’s glow is millions of white circle arcs (the shortest routes between two points) on top of a blue map of the world. As a result, the regions with the most friend connections shine the brightest.
But more interesting are the parts of the globe with the least friend connections—or more accurately, limited internet access. There are dark spots over much of Russia, whose social network Vkontakte is more popular than Facebook; huge swaths of unwired Africa; and of course China, where the social network is blocked behind the country's Great Firewall.
Facebook’s trotting out the map as a sign of progress toward its ultimate goal of connecting the entire world. When the original visualization was created three years ago, by an intern on the data engineering team, there were 500 million interwoven lines (see the difference?):
Via
Now, the company's on a mission to expand to the next 5 billion people—to tackle any remaining dark Facebookless voids around the world.