I find myself curious to know how a random person on Facebook is connected to me. Let's call this random person 'Bob'. For example:

Bob -> Susan -> John -> Victor

...might be the shortest path from Bob to me through our connections. There might be more than one equivalent shortest path:

Bob -> Susan -> Peter -> Victor

What about all the more complicated ways that Bob and I are connected? Surely if there is a four-person path, there is likely to be a five-person or ten-person path as well.

Bob -> Harold -> Nancy -> Megan -> Lucy -> etc -> etc -> Victor

I propose a mapping software that will generate a visual map of these not-so-close-friend connections, similar to the Opte project (see link). The more direct paths could be brighter in order to indicate their importance.

Thoughts?
-- victor, Apr 14 2010

Opte Project http://www.opte.org/maps/
a visual representation of the Internet [victor, Apr 14 2010]

You wouldn't have the rights to explore these links unless you were friends with everyone involved.
-- Aristotle, Apr 14 2010


@Aristotle - the vast majority of people on Facebook have their Friends list open to the world.
-- victor, Apr 15 2010


Can application or game trawl these friends links on facebook without any additional permission? I suppose this could be done with an external server if Facebook decided to tolerate it.
-- Aristotle, Apr 15 2010


I love this kind of stuff (probably cos I like playing with Flash). There's no reason you couldn't build a facebook app that could map your own network in 2D, 3D, 4D, whatever. Great project.
-- wagster, Apr 15 2010


//The more direct paths could be brighter in order to indicate their importance.//

Just out of interest, why do you think that the direct path is more important than the indirect one?
-- DrBob, Apr 15 2010



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