The goal of Facebook's Project Palantir is to "visualize all the data that Facebook gets". Each Facebook action is geo-located on a 3D globe, becomes a particle that floats off the surface of the Earth, and then disappears. Facebook interactions (e.g. friend requests, pokes, wall posts) are shown by 3D splines or a trailing mesh connecting 2 locations, with each color representing a different sort of interaction. Watch the demonstration movie at Facebook, or the high-quality YouTube version below. Similar globe-based visualizations include: Google's Information Display at GooglePlex, 3D Live Stats, the still impressive InfoMagnet, Google Proximity between Cities. One more Facebook visualization is the Lexus social network graph, and there is a considerable collection at Many Eyes. In the meantime, lets see whether the recent addition of Lee Byron as an Interactive Information Designer at Facebook, and known from the stacked Stream Graph of LastFM listening behaviors, will bring forward more Facebook visualizations! Thnkx Nick. Via TechCrunch.
