When choosing a map, which do you prefer — pretty or useful ? In an ideal world I would take pretty useful , but forced to choose between the two I'll take useful. Here are two social graphs taken from my Twitter following data. The first map, by TweetWheel , is pretty, has nice colors, a simple and elegant interface, and a nice circular layout. MORE >>

I used to think Twitter was stupid. After one week of actual activity, I find it useful. Twitter is a "micro-blogging" platform that allows you to quickly post short messages[tweets] of I see "What are you doing?" as the wrong question — it focuses too much on daily minutiae, and not on what others may find interesting about you. MORE >>

This week's PBS Frontline show was fascinating. They discussed the financial meltdown and how it was exacerbated by the massive inter-connectivity of the banking system. Using social network analysis , let's take a look at how a contagion spreads through a connected system. The arrows represent the flow of assets. They were wrong. MORE >>

The Swine Flu has been in the news during April 2009. Initially it spread amongst pigs, and then made the jump to humans that came in contact with the contagious pigs. From the early data, this appears to have happened in Mexico. We use the social network analysis software, InFlow , to illustrate the spread of the contagion. MORE >>

Recently, the White House revealed who has visited with members of the Obama Administration and when and how long that occurred. Above is a network map of the who visited with whom: Visitor --> Visited. The larger the node, the more visitors received. The links show only the smaller meetings of less than 1 dozen people in attendance. MORE >>