Google+ launches ‘Ripples’ visualisation | Hacker News Reader

Google+ launches ‘Ripples’ visualisation

visualisingdata.com

117 pointsAnon8418 comments

That's very fancy and a great start! I hope more social graph networks release contextualized data like this. Despite the impressive visualization, I still find myself struggling to find the answers I really want:

1. Path (and distance) that a reshare traveled between the originator and the reshare I'm currently seeing in my stream.

2. Percentile (and absolute number) of reshares my reshare accounts for. That is, what volume of the total reshare tree my subtree is responsible for.

Bonus: Potential impressions (aka maximum reach) my reshare accounts for by counting the total unique audience for each reshare in my subtree.

Built by http://twitter.com/#!/viegasf http://twitter.com/#!/wattenberg and http://twitter.com/#/jhebert

Ironic?

Why? Last I heard Twitter and Facebook weren't banned on the campus. Each network has it's audience and undoubtedly Twitter is huge.

Some interesting ripples:

Steve Yegge's rant follow-up: https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=bwJ7kAELR...

Steve Yegge Amazon war story #1:https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=AaygmbzVe...

It would have been interesting to see the ripple for the original rant...

edit: Although Steve deleted the post, here's the associated ripple: https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=WugKtXSp7...

This one is huge too https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=TupMP3Zjq...

IMO, this feature should not be part of core G+ experience. It might be useful for top 1% of users to see how influential they are.

Instead, empower the App developers do such awesme innovation with your data. <yegge_repeat> Learn to think like a PLATFORM! </yegge_repeat>

"IMO, this feature should not be part of core G+ experience. It might be useful for top 1% of users to see how influential they are."

Why?

It should be part of G+, because it's cool and google usually does cool things. But it is indeed useful only for the top % of users, because the average user doesn't get that many reshares.

PS: yes, I would really love to be able to build apps/games for G+ the same way I can for Facebook. If G+ would do that I bet developers would jump on the opportunity. It's going to be like .. Android vs the iPhone all over again

Why not both?

This is pretty off-topic, but is there some secret google setting that makes scrolling on a touchpad scroll instead of zooming? I'm sort of resigned to it in maps, but this thing has it too.

I am curious what the purpose of disabling zoom for a touchscreen device is - hard to see pictures on an iPhone you can't zoom in on.

What he means is, on a mac when you use two-finger together in a swiping motion, it'll scroll whatever document the mouse is on.

The google stuff (eg maps) has it where if you do the two-finger swiping motion, instead of scrolling, it'll zoom. Which is incredibly annoying.

I know we talk a lot about privacy here and Google's requirement to use your real name. When seeing people's names and the network effects of events like this, it gets a bit unsettling. At least with Facebook, social networks and groups are relatively closed.

Update: Imagine the ability for a govt/group/organization to constrict the information flow by eliminating the strongest nodes in the sharing structure.

At least with Facebook, social networks and groups are relatively closed.

I'm no Facebook expert, but I believe that Facebook also has the three ingredients necessary to do this: 1) the ability to make public posts, 2) the concept of sharing posts, and 3) attribution of who the post came from when you share it.

It's not like this Google+ visualization is about private posts. The following page clearly says it is limited to those that are public.

http://www.google.com/support/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a...

That's a natural consequence of small world graph. Reducing super-nodes can substantially increase travel distance.

I don't know why there's so much hostility towards G+. So what if it's not the best product yet or if it doesn't have feature X that you want, they are making improvements every single week. Ripples is just another cool thing, and you can choose to either use or not use it. At least they're improving at an incredible rate and adding features that at least some people (like me) really love.

I'll repeat that you can also choose not to use it and post irrelevant negative comments on whatever favorite social network you have.

Another crappy and useless feature from G+.

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