I’ve been a bit behind on my blog reading lately and just came across David Byrne’s (yes THAT David Byrne) post from a couple of Saturday’s ago on Social “Hateworking”:

It seems to me that this was inevitable. Once you have the existence of social networking sites you have to take the bad with the good. While it might be nice to think that they are a place to meet “friends” and like minded folks, it is just as likely to be a place to make enemies, engage in gossip, spread rumors, scratch and claw. These are a big part of social life in the real world, and to think that the online world would just be about nice stuff and making friends, well…

 The stories in the referenced Financial Times article are a little scary. Be careful out there people. 

Jeff Berg of the Interpublic Emerging Media Lab posted a great article on the growth of Facebook applications (3,000 and counting) that have been developed by third-party developers since the system went live a few months ago. 

One stood out: Interactive Friends Graph

As you can see, my entire network (not that big, really) is posted in this application.  When I scroll over a friend - in this case, Ed Mahon - I immediately see how our networks overlap. 

The name “Interactive Friends Graph” is terribly boring, but this visualization tool is something I have been wanting for a very long time. 

A major problem I have had with social networks from the beginning is they have been programed not as networks but as linear streams of data.  MySpace posts my friends in rows.  Facebook posts my friends in columns.

Now, with this map, I can finally see a representation of my social network much as it exists in my head - a mishmash of loose connections that encircle my little slice of the world.

This same type of mapping (e.g., multi-axis and multi-dimensional) will play a key role in Web 2.5 (yes, I just made that up).  More to come, I’m sure.