Following on from my post on Immersion, the Gmail metadata mapping tool, I learnt of two other tools that map Facebook and LinkedIn metadata (i.e. your social graph). David Glance mentioned them in his article in the Conversation about the power of metadata ('Your social networks and the secret story of metadata').
This is what my Facebook social graph looks like:
What's cool about this network mapping is that, because people share a lot of information about themselves on Facebook and the tool knows who my friends-of-friends are, you can see one level deeper and find sub-networks within my broader social graph. Many of these are high school and university based sub-networks but some are also immediate-family groupings.
The social graph that's probably cooler (and certainly prettier) is this one from LinkedIn Maps:
This shows you that I'm connected to four major networks, one each for my two universities (LUMS and MBS) and one each for the two places I've worked at the longest here in Melbourne (Melbourne Water and Jetstar).
And even though Jetstar and Melbourne Water are in completely different industries the kind of work I did (and am still doing) in both jobs is similar so the crossover space between their two clouds is where all my suppliers, vendors, and industry contacts are.
One thing I've noted while doing all this mapping is the size of my network on each platform:
- Gmail contacts: 478
- LinkedIn connections: 505
- Facebook friends: 505
- Twitter followers: 776
That's reasonably consistent and certainly above average for each of those social networks. I suppose that's a good thing.