Inspired in part by my previous success in getting a side-project released in one day, and also by Sacha Greif’s Side-Project Project, I’m releasing another small app.
This time, I thought I’d create an app that can visualise a Facebook friends network — that is, a way of seeing how are your friends connected. This can produce some interesting information, such as clustering together different groups of people such as your work colleagues and old school friends, for example.
Anyway, it’s not quite finished… but I’m nearly there. Here is a sneak peak at what it’s going to look like:
In this screen, the friend’s network is being constructed — circles represent friends and the lines between them represent a friendship. Hovering over the circles shows the actual person’s name. Once this has been calculated, the visualisation is re-arranged to show how friends are grouped together:
This was the perfect project to put into practice what I’ve learnt so far on the Social Network Analysis course that I’m currently studying.
I’ve spent around 6 hours on it so far, and imagine will get some time next week to finish it off.
Anyway, if you are interested in playing around with the finished app, please let me know. Just follow this blog, or alternative sign up for my newsletter using the form below — you’ll be the first to hear about it!
Next time, I’ll explain how I built it.
Glen Scott
I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.
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