Dr Andy drew my attention to this cool [Friend Wheel generator](http://apps.facebook.com/friendwheel/) on Facebook. It processes your list of friends into a wheel, drawing lines of connection to each other to form a beautiful chart. Friends’ names are coloured according to how ‘hot’ or cold they are in terms of interlinks.
I tried it out for myself:
I guess I have a happy problem of having too many friends on Facebook. I re-generated it, this time with the largest resolution possible:
(Warning: The original is almost 5MB in size)
But the analysis is interesting. From there I can see huge webs of interlinking between different groups of friends. Colleagues, of course, are all linked to each other. Local social media and PR experts, bloggers, folks from The Digital Movement are all linked to each other, as they should be 😉 Some of you are quite ‘happening’ as there are so many lines around your names, the lines coagulated into solid patches of colour!
Two new groups have recently emerged as major blocs on my Friends list, also heavily intertwined on my Friend web. Firstly, there is the INSEAD group. We should jolly well be connected to each other, since we are going to suffer/study/party together for 10 months straight!
Secondly, there is my new network of Facebook gamers. We have to add each other as Friends to build up our own armies or mobs. But that is getting to be a big distraction and time-waster so I am contemplating quitting Mob Wars before I start school.
Also, the system randomly picks 600 friends so please don’t mind if you’ve been left out! You can choose to generate Friend Wheels within certain networks, but since my current networks are only for ‘Singapore’ and my university, it will either be too vast or too narrow a range.
Anyway, if you’re on Facebook you can get your own. Have fun!
This is the most fascinating colour chart I’ve received since my eyeballs’ contours were scanned in preparation for LASIK …