In case you haven’t spotted it yet, Ripples is a rather nifty visualization created by the world’s most popular search engine (and plucky social-networking challenger) for its fledgling network, Google+.
Ripples reveals how an update has spread across Google+, from one user to many others, as it is shared, commented on and so forth. The image above shows the impressive stir caused by Sergey Brin’s short eulogy on Steve Jobs.
Few of us have the kind of following that Brin does, but it’s still fun to look at the ripples caused by an update. It’s also an excellent example of how visualization can help everyone explore the burgeoning amount data that is generated by their social activities online. This is something Facebook has begun to explore with its new Timeline feature.
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