Map of the World Based on Online Friendships

Dec. 14, 2010

By Brandon Scott Gorrell info

Brandon Scott Gorrell is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn, NY.

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An intern at Facebook created a map of the world defined not by geographical features of geopolitical boundaries, but by Facebook friendships.

The intern, Paul Butler, took around 10 million Facebook friendships (pairs of Facebook friends) and plotted their coordinates on the map above. The brighter a line between cities, the more Facebook friendships there are between the two. Creating the map, Butler was interested in “how geography and political borders affected where people lived relative to their friends.” Guess the Red Scare’s still in effect.

You can see the full size image here. TC mark

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Via Gawker

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  • Hugh Lilly

    sweet

  • http://twitter.com/artis_k Artis Kamals

    For example Latvia is so “dark” because we have site called draugiem.lv which was faunded at the same time with Facebook. Actually it's quite amaizing, because there are not so many countries with their own social network witch would be more popular than FB.

  • Zachary

    fuck you artis being able to comment first AND be relevant

  • http://twitter.com/artis_k Artis Kamals

    Ha-ha; ha-ha-ha.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1363230138 Michael Koh

    sweet2.ooth

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