We went to a comedy show at the Irvine Improv on Friday night. Gilbert Gottfried was the headliner. I happened to recognize one of the comedians, David Angelo, sitting in the back of the room before the show — I’m a fan of his work on Twitter and YouTube — and he was gracious enough to pose for a photo taken by my wife:

Now you might say that’s not a very good photo, but it is recognizable as two human beings, which is more than you could say before I spent an hour working it over in Photoshop . . .

I’m taking a Social Network Analysis class on Coursera. These weren’t assignments for the class (well, the Facebook one sort of was), just some experiments I wanted to share.

Facebook

You can use netvizz to download a gdf file of your Facebook network, i.e., all of your Facebook friends and all of the connections between them.

You can then use your favorite graph analysis software (I used Gephi, which is open-source and free) to look for patterns.

My Facebook network is in the image below. Of the four main clusters, two consist of co-workers, one is family and one is people I know from roller hockey.

Click image to enlarge

Twitter

This is the network of people I follow on Twitter. I used NodeXL (a free, open-source template for Excel) to download and lay out the data.

Click image to enlarge

I labeled the nodes in this one. With a few exceptions, the light blue nodes are people I follow because I think they’re funny, the light green nodes are related to sports and/or USC, the dark green nodes are people of professional interest, the red nodes are former colleagues, and the dark blue nodes are everyone else.

The size of the node indicates number of tweets, i.e., larger nodes tweet more than smaller nodes.

LinkedIn

My LinkedIn network is a little bigger than my Facebook or Twitter. The green, yellow, blue, purple and orange clusters are co-workers and recruiters. The gray nodes at the top are people with whom I share one or more professional interests. You can see that they split out into multiple sub-groups.

Click image to enlarge

I used the LinkedIn Maps application to generate the graphic.

Summary

These are small-world networks and I had a good idea in advance about who was connected to who and why.

The value of tools like this is in applying them to “real world” networks. In the absence of analytical tools to extract patterns from raw data, large, complex networks just look like giant hairballs.

To give you an idea, this image shows what my Facebook network looks like in Gephi before applying a layout algorithm,

Click image to enlarge

Typical Romney supporter:

“Five million jobs doesn’t even keep up woth [sic] our population growth.”–Romney. Obama’s solution: free contraceptives! #2012

Typical Obama supporter:

IF ROMNEY GETS ELECTED AND TAKES AWAY MY FOOD STAMPS IMA SEND SOMEONE TO MURDER HIS ASS

[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan -- PE]

Next year I’m going to live tweet the Oscar In Memoriam segment so I can tell you which celebrities are in Hell.

See you at the movies!

My wife dominates the Twitter landscape with almost 1,000 followers . . .

“I have to say something to my followers about my son going to college,” she says.

The boy overhears this and pipes in: “My only child is leaving for college in two months. Hashtag sadbutproud.”

It’s a good thing women aren’t married off young by their fathers anymore, or else we’d have a real homeless cat problem on our hands.

— Shelby Fero

• RT @ChelseaVPeretti: When people say "it is what it is" we all learn so much via this insight #
• RT @eddiepepitone: if your life involves long discussions about flax seed than you need to take more risks. #
• RT @eddiepepitone: I always tell children that lunatic clowns will kill them in their sleep. I want to see the cut of their jib. #

• RT @eddiepepitone: When shit hits fan here people will be quoting American Idol contestants for inspiration. #

• RT @eddiepepitone: Ancient U.S.A. saying- When mall is open and food court busy, a calm comes over all the uneducated minds. #

• RT @yoyoha: Every woman has a tiny ball of hatred in her heart that is fed by the actions of everyone around them. #
• RT @capricecrane: Is there a “Your Kid Looks The Same As Yesterday” button on Facebook? #
• RT @yoyoha: I’m currently eating graham crackers in the shape of little bunnies. This can’t be helping my street cred. #

• I once killed an Italian man in a duel after he accused me of not understanding Dante. #

• RT @celebinrmonolog: 10-YEAR-OLD WILLOW SMITH: Yo, I've paid my dues! Now gimme my deserved stardom, bitches! #
• RT @theharryshearer: The voice of empire: “Get used to it, world. We’re not going to put up with nonsense.” Duane (Dewey) Clarridge. #

• RT @capricecrane: To the world you may be one person but to one person you may be the world. And to everyone else, you're just some asshole. #
• Pet peeve: People who pronounce -th as -f, as in "toof" or "boof" #

• RT @alaindebotton: It's always the scariest people who parade their kids around us to persuade us of their (elusive) humanity. #

• RT @MrsRupertPupkin: My cat tried to knock over my TV this morning. WHY ARE MY BEST FRIENDS FIGHTING?! #

• RT @sockelganger: hello table hello rug hello lamp hello window i am lucky to have so many friends #

• Trying to teach my dog to yawn on command when I say "Sleepy?" Has anyone done this? #
• If a God has made this world, then I would not like to be the God; its misery and distress would break my heart. — Schopenhauer #

• RT @yoyoha: When technology finally makes me obsolete, I'm going to take a nice long nap. #
• RT @yoyoha: "I know you're not crazy" is a good thing to say to a crazy person. #