Try it! It's Easy! A Big Data Tool for Your Facebook Account

Hello fellow WRMs.  This post will point you to a cool tool from Wolfram Alpha that will let you gain "big data" insight on you and your Facebook network.  It's easy to use and will also give you some insight to the power of even a simple big data tool at work. 

Wolfram Alpha is a "computational knowledge engine" designed to help users get answers in a different way than traditional search engines.  It's focus is not on searching the web, but on doing computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods.  Rather than "find" an answer, it aims to "compute" the answer to any factual question.

The data sets and computational tools are useful for things that have factual answers like:

• find the DNA sequence at a given position on a chromosome
• get historical NFL player statistics
• play a 440Hz sine wave
• specify a point from which an eclipse should be visible
• generate maps of ancient continent configurations

It's a very powerful left brain tool but I suspect that most people don't know about it and/or are intimidated by it.  

So Wolfram Alpha has done something out-of-character to attract a wider audience. They've developed something interesting and fun for the common person, a tool which does an analysis of your Facebook account.

Simply click on the box above, allow Wolfram Alpha to access your Facebook data and you'll have a report in less than a minute.  You'll have to create a free Wolfram Alpha account too but it's worth it.

Then you'll receive a multi-page graphical report which you can update at anytime and compare over time.

You can see aggregate data of your social network for things like:

• Friends' relationship statuses
• Friends' ages
• Geographical ranges and extremes
• Most common friend names
• Friends with most mutual friends
• Friends with most friends

To me the most interesting graphic is the "friend network" graphic which visually shows the relationships among your friends.  Here's mine:

The naturally occurring clusters are my high school, my college, my town, my work and then the "outliers," those who aren't related to anyone else.  In the "live version" of this graphic you can hover over each dot to see who it is.

I hope you enjoy using Wolfram Alpha for your Facebook Report.  And do explore Wolfram Alpha...you may find it a powerful addition to your marketing toolkit.