ABSTRACT
As Alex Iskold points out, unlike the use of social graphs as visualization tools in the social sciences and health sciences, with a digital social graph, social and informational connections are one and the same. Likewise, the fractal subject contrasts with readings of social networking as a collaborative, collective project of identity formation. Facebook determined the order and presentation of News Feed items based on an algorithm which one's own actions on Facebook would result in weighing some actions or key words higher than others in the feed. Consider the recent action taken by Facebook against Peter Warden, whose analysis of public accounts has resulted in impressive data visualizations of usage and linkage networks. From the perspective of Facebook and marketers alike, the 'ecstatic' value of identity is expressed in the social graph, defined by Brad Fitzpatrick as 'the global mapping of everybody and how they're related'.
