Wolfram Alpha’s Analysis of Facebook Networks
Wolfram Alpha is most notably known as a powerful online tool used to complete math problems. However, they have expanded into several other data collection areas and now boasts expertise in science, mathematics, culture, art and much more. One of the more notable features recently added to the site is the “Facebook Report.” This report compiles a massive amount of data concerning your particular Facebook profile. Some such information includes “Post Statistics” which is further broken down into “Top Post Sharers.” This data can give you a view into your personal Facebook use and post success. However, the more interesting part of this tool comes from Wolfram Alpha’s ability to compile basic data about all of your friends and your connections to them.
By compiling information about all of your friends an your connections to them, Wolfram Alpha is able to create a graphical network of your Facebook (shown below). The network shown below is my personal Facebook friend network. This graph is clearly divided into three major groups and a minor subgroup. The large green group is made up of my friends who I grew up with and lived in close proximity to me. A subgroup of this group is the group of green dots below the larger group. This subgroup is made up of my family and close relatives. Clearly, the graph shows that while my family is definitely connected to the people I grew up with, they are slightly removed and more connected to each other than to the people I grew up with. The next major group is the light blue group left of the green group. This group is composed of the people I went to high school with. Since I went to a private high school, this group is separate from the people who I grew up with. At the same time, since I went to school not too far from where I grew up, there is a decent amount of overlap between certain parts of the light blue and the green group. Finally, all the way to the left is the dark blue group made up of the people who I attend Cornell with. This group is not quite as dense as the green and light blue groups because I have not spent as much time at Cornell and Cornell is larger than my town and my high school, so people are less likely to all know each other. Additionally, since only a single person from my town and high school attend Cornell, there is a distinct separation between the dark blue group and the other groups. Overall, this graphical representation of my Facebook friends tells a very accurate story of how each of my various social groups work within themselves and between my social groups.
Wolfram Alpha goes into further analysis of this graphical representation of my friend network by pointing out various friends who play important social roles in my network (shown below). The gray points are considered unimportant to my network and Wolfram Alpha labels them as “Social Outsiders.” The purple nodes are considered “Social Insiders” and these are people who share a large amount of friends with you. In this case, we can see that the most social insiders are in my group of friends who I grew up with. This makes sense because I have had the most time to expand that particular social network and that network is the most dense so several people have a large number of mutual friends in common with me. The green nodes are called “Social Connectors.” These are people who serve as bridges from one group to another group. Not surprisingly, there are few social connectors among the friends I grew up with because almost everyone knows everyone already. However, there are many social connectors among my friends at Cornell because the network is less dense and there are more opportunities for bridges between groups to form. The yellow nodes are “Social Neighbors.” Social neighbors are defined as friends who do not have many friends that you are not somehow connected to. Again, it is expected that the most social neighbors would exist in my group of friends I grew up with since we all know each other, while there are very few people at Cornell who have minimal amounts of friends that I do not know. Finally, the red nodes are considered “Social Gateways.” Social gateways are defined as people with inordinately large friend networks. As a result, social gateways can appear in any of the friend groups. This breakdown of the friend network gives a very good idea of how social networks function and can grow further by highlighting people who can act as connections to outside groups.
Source: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=facebook+report