You, dear readers, are all smart people. So I'm asking for your suggestions - how to analyse networks of links between blogs? Tools, sites with analytic tools, visualisation apps, the whole shebang. Please let me know...
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Since I will use vulgar language, this post will be mostly below the fold.
This commenter asked me to justify a claim, to which I responded by calling him an asshole. The reason is simple, the question is a simple factual query which could have been answered by checking the source I cited. The…
In what sense are you talking networks? Just links? Blogrolls? All blogs, or just a subset of blogs?
Maybe you can ask Truth Laid Bear, http://truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php ,for their data, used in making the blogging ecosystem.
If you don't find an easy solution, drop me an mail (public@kristjanwager.dk).
I've been considering something similar for a while now, and we might be able to figure something out.
There is a website used by sociologists that can map out and visualise these sorts of network. But, bugger me, I can't remember the name of it, and I've deleted the bookmark. If I remember, I'll look in my email archive.
Anyway, these links might help:
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
http://www.insna.org/
Or at least might provide a distraction for a couple of hours.
Bob
I doubt that this is what you are looking for. Still, wbesites as graphs makes nice graphical representations of all links found under a certain URL.
You will find it here:
http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/
Maybe you find something at:
http://www.visualcomplexity.com
With a scale free model, of course.
RPM, could you sum up what a scale free model is for those of us who can't access the article?
I don't know much about the topic, but I guess that one think is obtaining the data, and the other is analyzing/visualizing it. For the second there are some standard tools (one that I remember is Pajek, but I can ask a friend for more references). For the first, I think you'd need to either (1) write a lot of code, or (2) get it from people who already have. People have being doing analysis of links ever since the old times of web 1.0, so I suppose there must be some tools out there. The only specific data on blogs that I've come across was through this post about a certain blog corpus... alas, no links, just text (from blogger, in 2004); the author of the post mentions there the existence of other blog corpora. Anyway, that blog (which also features a "Mapping the blogosphere" gallery may be a good place for asking your questions, they are in his author's field.
Btw, I see that your blog is visited by respectful people who don't ask about the reason for a request. Since I'm curious and not very respectful, I wonder: are you asking on behalf of some friend/colleague? Because if not (i.e., if you, with your background and interests, are thinking about doing something with that kind of data), I'll be looking forward to read about some very interesting work in the future!
Let's just say there is a possible project in the works. Mum's the word...
Oops. Nevermind, I'll be checking Science ;-)
Kristjan,
It refers to models of networks where the structure and dynamics are considered independent of the size of the system, i.e. the number of nodes the system has. The number of connections a node has, or the "strength of interaction" between nodes is the issue of interest.
Cheers
John, as you know, smart people will be more forthcoming when a faced with a clear question rather the "tell me all you know about this general idea".
If I had a clear question to ask, I would (and will). But first I need to know what tools there are out there.
John, having managed a number of software projects, large and small, my first question to a customer is what do you want to do, or in a case like yours, what do you want to know, or perhaps what are you trying to accomplish.
You say you want to "analyse networks of links between blogs." Do you already have the data or a way to acquire it? Or is that part of the problem?
Are you looking at ways to understand and think about a static network of links and/or how the link-network changes over time?
Do you have format requirements for the link data? That is, at some point you need a file format for vectors and nodes.
A spreadsheet like OpenOffice Calc has statistical tools to do some analysis and can produce useful (if not particularly pretty) graphs and charts.
Plug "network visualization tools" into Google and you get a plethora of hits. Looking at a few of the top ones, they seem to be pretty useful. Perhaps some of these will help you describe what you need.
This blog looks quite interesting.
I fairly certain you'll find a lot of tools in the opensource world.
Good luck.