This Facebook Network Visualizer mashes up the TouchGraph flash-vector-graphing software with Facebook's developer API and produces cool graphs like this one.

Real interesting to see how my network maps out. A giant tangle of extraordinarily networked and wired political/tech folks whom I know mainly from the past three years. And some outlyers, most of whom I've known for a longer time, but generally not as members of an interconnected posse.

Rich Orris has a special and odd role as the sole person whom I knew in college who is now a significant part of my more recent network. So while Rich is very much tied in to that central cluster, there are also a hard half dozen folks here with whom Rich is my only listed mutual acquaintance. I sort of knew this intuitively, but it's startling to see it visualized so clearly.

Of course the major factors confusing reality here are who's on Facebook and who isn't, and the lack of any contextual information about the strength or nature of my relationship with anyone. And yet, despite all this, the broad generalizations appear to be more or less accurate.

Footnote: Facebook is the first of the major social networking services I've tried (Friendster, Orkut, MySpace,) to offer the kind of serious developer API that makes stuff like this possible to create. That is really cool, and is a big part of why I expect FB to outlast the others.

Update: also interesting that while Facebook's structure is based around college-oriented networks, my college friends are probably the least networked individuals in the whole map. And yet the site always redirects me to "wesleyan.facebook.com". Yet another way community-driven tech strays from its intended purposes.

If you use facebook, take a screenshot of your map and send me the link!