FFSixDegrees - take a closer look at your Friendfeed network

Just finished (for the moment) a small application that can be used for social network analysis of Friendfeed data. See for example this visualization of my Friendfeed contact network.

The application loads your contacts and your contacts’ contacts from Friendfeed and not only displays your number of friends and friends-of-friends but also the five most influential people in your network. Influence is defined as the number of incoming links a person has - like Twitter followers, but only within your FOAF-network. I also added a small chart that shows the relation of your direct contacts to all the people you can use via your friends.

The script is located here. But especially for people with lots of contacts, this can take quite a while because all contacts not in the cache must be downloaded via the Friendfeed API. If anyone’s interested in the PHP code, send me a mail and I’ll send it to you.

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August 3, 2008 at 4:22 pm Czar

Thanks for making this tool. Trying it out now...
August 3, 2008 at 4:27 pm Brian Sullivan

I wonder how many people have Scobleizer in the number 1 place?
August 3, 2008 at 4:29 pm Benedikt Koehler

Brian, if many of your friends are also following you, you should be at number one.
August 3, 2008 at 5:27 pm Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Very cool stuff. Thanks for sharing!
August 3, 2008 at 7:42 pm Benedikt Koehler

Unfortunately, for users with many contacts the script suddenly exits without warning. Have to debug this first.
August 3, 2008 at 7:52 pm Mark Trapp

Cool idea, but the reciprocal count is misleading. For me, it says "Hi, itafroma! Your 158 friends (149 reciprocal) connect you to 39471 Friendfeed users." However, this isn't true. 155 people reciprocate the subscription; I believe you're considering private subscribers as non-reciprocal, as I am subscribed to 6 private feeds.
August 3, 2008 at 7:55 pm Benedikt Koehler

@Mark: True. I cannot access private subscribers, so there not counted. To include them I would have to use your FF API key.
August 3, 2008 at 7:56 pm Benedikt Koehler

BTW I found the bug. Now it's quite fast and even works for people like @loic or @techcrunch ;-)
August 3, 2008 at 7:59 pm Mark Trapp

I've been playing around with reciprocal counts today, and I think you actually need the private feed's remote key to get that information. I think it's fine, but maybe it could be worded better? "Your 158 friends (149 public + reciprocal, 6 private)" or some such. I ran your tool earlier and was like "When did all these people unsubscribe from me?"
August 3, 2008 at 8:00 pm Mark Trapp

Also, the connection number keeps changing. I'm now down to 9,305 connections, from 39,471. Was the high number related to the bug?
August 3, 2008 at 8:03 pm Benedikt Koehler

Mark, I will change the wording. But: because I don't have access to the private contacts, I do not know whether they have subscribed to you. There are three types of contacts: public+reciprocal, public+unidirectional, private+reciprocal, private+unidirectional. Only FF can distinguish the last two. Or is there something I'm missing?
August 3, 2008 at 8:07 pm Mark Trapp

No, that's correct. I'm just saying that the reciprocal count you give could be qualified, is all. Like you said, you can know, for sure, who is reciprocating if they are public, but you can't make a claim either way if they are private (the API does inform that it's private, but doesn't provide the profile). The way it's worded currently seems to imply that it's definitely only N people reciprocating, regardless of privacy settings.
August 3, 2008 at 8:11 pm Todd Jordan

Mine here - http://skitch.com/toddjordan/1pwb/ffsixdegrees Scoble is not #1...but he's not far behind. :)
August 3, 2008 at 8:12 pm Ruth Ferguson

I am connected to 18,227 users, surprised Louis was @9. Like many of you Robert was #1.
August 3, 2008 at 8:48 pm Mitchell Tsai

Here's my FFSixDegrees chart http://friendfeed.com/e/005f2e80-ae9a-bb24-bf35-7d7168b99c66 Robert Scoble is #1. Connected to 21,007 users (not including 20-40 private feeds).
August 3, 2008 at 9:36 pm Bob Kingsley

Was asking about something like this just this morning (in connection with a news story about six degrees of separation) - I've got 36 Friends, through whom I'm connected to 7,469 FF users. Gosh - does this mean my humble FF posts float past all those users?
August 3, 2008 at 9:41 pm Benedikt Koehler

Bob, that's it. If they do not have disabled foaf-messages, every one of your FF posts is related to 7469 users around here. That's what I like about networking and what is different from mass media: In this world 36 friends can mean an audience of 7000. On television 36 viewers are just that: 36 viewers.
August 3, 2008 at 9:47 pm Daniel Schildt

"91 friends (32 public and reciprocal) connect you to 13019 Friendfeed users."
August 3, 2008 at 9:52 pm Eric Florenzano

Just checked it out...but I think my list will be very similar to everyone else's list: Scoble, Louis Gray, etc.
August 3, 2008 at 10:18 pm Bob Kingsley

Benedikt, thank you - although I've been surfing around on the net since its early days, this wider landscape of social networking is quite new to me and its potential has only just started to become clear. To employ an over-used word: AWESOME! No wonder I'm so addicted to it :)
August 3, 2008 at 10:30 pm Benedikt Koehler

Now it's ready for Scoble http://metaroll.com/ffsixdegrees.php?user=scobleizer
August 3, 2008 at 11:01 pm Benedikt Koehler

Added a bit of eyecandy showing the relation between direct contacts and indirect contacts.
August 3, 2008 at 11:41 pm Susan Beebe

eyecandy FTW!! yes!!
August 4, 2008 at 12:20 am Susan Beebe

here's the list of 6 degees.... add yours! http://friendfeed.com/e/55b28339-35bd-413f-adcb-219887c6fa92/Susan-Beebe-FF-6-degrees-FOAF-network/
August 4, 2008 at 12:24 am Nicole Simon

i am a sucker for such tools. :)

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FFSixDegrees - take a closer look at your Friendfeed network

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