Internet Map visualizes links between top websites
2012-07-31 08:44 by Daniela
Tags: Internet
Russian programmer Ruslan Enikeev took up the challenge to map the Internet. The map includes 350,000 websites and two million links from 196 countries, each color-coded. Ruslan's map rates the size of a website by the amount of traffic receives and how frequently surfers jump for one website to another. Thus the more often visitors go from one site to another, the closer they appear.
The map becomes a very easy way to see the big-hitters on the Internet, and all the familiar faces get their own giant circle, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Zooming in a little closer brings you another wealth of familiar names, such as Linked In and the International Movie Database (IMDB). Even the Mail Online gets its own circle, and a search box means you can check out your own personal favourites.
"The Internet global network is a phenomenon of technological civilization, and its exceptional complexity surpasses anything mankind has ever created. In essence, what we are dealing with here is a huge quantity of utterly unstructured information. The Internet Map is an attempt to look into the hidden structure of the network, fathom its colossal scale, and examine that which is impossible to understand from the bare figures of statistics," Enikeev said.
"Like any other map, The Internet Map is a scheme displaying objects' relative position - but unlike real maps (e.g. the map of the Earth) or virtual maps (e.g. the map of Mordor), the objects shown on it are not aligned on a surface," Enikeev added. "Mathematically speaking, The Internet Map is a bi-dimensional presentation of links between websites on the Internet. Every site is a circle on the map, and its size is determined by website traffic, the larger the amount of traffic, the bigger the circle. Users switching between websites forms links, and the stronger the link, the closer the websites tend to arrange themselves to each other."
Read more -here-
See the map -here-
