The social analyst is a basic app which discovers different groups of friends and any connections amongst them. It also allows you to query such data in interesting ways.
For example, how does one discover the connections between two sides of one's family? SocialAnalyst is the answer.
SocialAnalyst queries the Facebook API for all your friends and your mutual connections. It then analyses the densities of these connections to discover the groups. Your connections are then sorted into specific, named groups by using your personal information such as:
- family members
- schools
- pages
- friends.
The algorithm is quite simple really. The theory is that groups can be identified by densities in their social graph. To do this, the app will pull a user's social graph, which is composed of their various connections, and recreate the graph. [algorithm not finalized]. Then the app can then, using various variables such as the user's school, colleges, workplaces and especially family to determine the various social groups in the user's graph.
Once this is determined, the user will then be given a sandbox in which to examine their own social groups in novel ways. This will be an app that actually algorithmically creates "Oh, it is a small world" moments.