Check out this stunning Facebook world map

December 14, 2010 By Jeffrey Van Camp

A lone Facebook intern has created a world map built solely from 10 million friendship pairings. Not bad for a new guy.

Have you ever wondered what 10 million friendships would look like on a world map? Well, a Facebook engineer has the answer for you. The map below was made by Paul Butler, an engineering intern at Facebook. In a blog post, he explains how he created this visualized representation of friendships. His quest began when he became curious as to whether country or physical location had a big impact on friendships. In other words, he wondered if people had a lot of friends who live far away from them, perhaps around the world. So he took a sample of 10 million friendship pairs from the Facebook database and made this image.

The results are fairly evident and we recommend you check it out in high resolution to fully understand what you’re looking at. This data was not graphed onto a map, by the way. Every lit up dot of land is the geo-location of a friend. The map formed itself by the sheer number of connections. The most lit areas–Europe and the United States–are bright because of the density of smaller range friendships inside them.

“After a few minutes of rendering, the new plot appeared, and I was a bit taken aback by what I saw,” said Butler. “The blob had turned into a surprisingly detailed map of the world. Not only were continents visible, certain international borders were apparent as well. What really struck me, though, was knowing that the lines didn’t represent coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships. Each line might represent a friendship made while travelling, a family member abroad, or an old college friend pulled away by the various forces of life…When I shared the image with others within Facebook, it resonated with many people. It’s not just a pretty picture, it’s a reaffirmation of the impact we have in connecting people, even across oceans and borders.”

As much as we dog Facebook here and there, this perfectly shows the great qualities of social networking. With only 10 million of the 500 million connections, we are able to build a map of the world solely from our own personal connections. Very cool.

Showing 27 comments

zahid at 7:16am 6th January 2011 hi if i want to use this picture how much i have to pay regards
raworahi at 8:48am 31st December 2010 What would be really awesome is to publish this as a tool that would let us plot our own friend networks, even just to the second degree would be sufficient (showing all your friendship pairs and all the friendship pairs of the people you are friends with) as a way to display ones own reach/interconnectedness with the world.
Cea Wall at 11:50am 28th December 2010 I am pleased to see the West Coast of Greenland on the map, lit up. When visiting this past summer, I was surprised to see how many people in Greenland had Facebook on their computers (in a country of 56,000 people, 52,000 are online).
Luddite4ever at 11:06pm 27th December 2010 Hmm looks like Venezuela doesn't participate in facebook ... but then neither do I, really do I want every old biddy from my past sorting me out and reminding me of every silly thing I did when I was twelve? I have heard too many accounts of families only communicating through FB and re engaging in old battles all through the luxury of this technology, this monster. I prefer my privacy and the ability to not respond to an unwanted letter or unsolicited phone call.
Angi at 5:46pm 27th December 2010 It's a beautiful rendition of the dynamism of human relationships across the globe. Of course, some geographical locations, such as Canada and Russia, will not be clearly delineated due to their vast tracts of largely uninhabited lands, nor will those countries be delineated which severely restrict the personal freedoms of their citizens. But while Russia looks like a large, black area on this map, you can clearly see Moscow as a lone bright spot just to the right of where Latvia and Lithuania are situated. On an ideological level, it's apparent that in countries where people's freedoms are not unnecessarily curtailed or hindered by their governments, those people are indeed living in "the light," whereas those people in countries which have autocratic governments are similarly living in "darkness." Hopefully, someday everyone around the globe will be able to live in "the light."
Sharona at 11:39pm 23rd December 2010 Anybody notice that most Islamic countries are big black holes?
1. Eric at 1:52am 27th December 2010 Indonesia IS an Islamic country....
  1. StevenL at 2:39pm 27th December 2010 He said most
Hendrik @ Vancouver at 7:47pm 20th December 2010 Interesting to see the Canada-US border between Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, but the rest of Canada is well connected to our southern neighbours.
1. straittohell at 4:18pm 21st December 2010 Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that I would have to spoon feed it to you - "why the rest of the country is as visible". Is that better?
Virginia at 6:09pm 20th December 2010 Judy...this so darn indicitive...a world without artificial borders...something i've always wished for...and still don't understand why others don't. wish i could see Aussies tho. or maybe it's my own ignorance that keeps me from it... skipping school, andbeing a high school drpout, and all:) at least i made it into uni!
Dila at 3:21pm 19th December 2010 I know why you could not see China. Maybe because they are not allow to open Facebook with their local internet network system.
steve at 10:51am 18th December 2010 Regardless of its beauty this how is this "map" not projected - you just can't project dots and represent them as a world map without some kind of a projection datumn. I guess I'm saying there is more to this "map" story!
Nemesio at 2:35pm 16th December 2010 The Islands of the Philippines are brightly lit. Our distant friendships and family ties keep us alive.
yarnman99 at 12:36pm 16th December 2010 i want a print... how about superimposing a mag of the real globe under this at like 50% opacity so you can really make out the countries with less signals so we can get a real perspective of the 'blue map'
Janka at 2:57pm 14th December 2010 Nice to see that Latvia prefers local draugiem.lv instead of global monsters. Apparently programmers in other countries are unable to create a local social network that would be much better than facebook. Actually, I unsubscribed from fb, thanks to its very poor content.
1. CitizenDeep at 7:12pm 14th December 2010 @Janka - the picture here is stunning because it very nearly accurately depicts a World Without Boundaries. It is a reality in a world where migration, economic growth, dispersion of opportunity and an ever-increasing openness are more valued than the inward looking mindset of generations past. While I don't dispute your statement that local s/n's may be more relevant content-wise, the really interesting boundary that needs to be stretched is what geeks would probably call the MetaNetwork - the interconnection of all such social networks. You won't necessarily have to love FB, or even be a member of FB, to be able to communicate with me, who is a member of Orkut in India (and oh BTW, also FB :-p) BTW - I believe local s/n's are in vogue in many countries - I know of some in European countries like Spain et al and elsewhere around the world. @Jim - fully in agreement; would love to order a print if possible!
Emily at 10:23am 14th December 2010 WOW, this is pretty cool. It is amazing how well the world is drawn here, just by connections of friends!! Nice work Facebook! Agree with the above, would make an awesome print!!
1. @JeffreyVC at 1:11pm 14th December 2010 I'm with you guys. I've already made the image my desktop background. Imagine what all 500 million connections would look like...
rayne at 9:51am 14th December 2010 I can see Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, etc. All the major Canadian cities are there. It's just all the bushland you dont see!
Jim at 8:41am 14th December 2010 Like Jim, I want to buy this as a print for hanging as well!
Jim at 8:28am 14th December 2010 I want this to buy as a print for hanging.
Guest at 8:06am 14th December 2010 Cannot see Alaska because instead of social networking the bush folks are busy watching the skies for the Russian bears.
Pppp at 7:48am 14th December 2010 Would be nice if all of the lines coming from each individual country were a different color and proportional. Also yea it is kind of strange that countries are missing from the map.
someone out there at 7:40am 14th December 2010 What is even more interesting is the area's you cant see. China and Russia, as well as Alaska and Canada.
1. straittohell at 11:07am 20th December 2010 I can't speak for the other countries, but Canada IS on there. Over 80% over Canada's population is within 100 km of the USA border - If you'll look closer, you'll see that the Southern Canada is represented perfectly fine - the lower population density of Northern Canada, coupled with the limited scope of only 10 million users, explains why the rest of the country is not on.
2. chi_sam at 4:18pm 31st December 2010 Are you goofy? All the population centers in Canada are depicted...