Method and system for visualizing weblog social network communities
View Patent ↗A system for providing a visual representation of electronic, on-line journals, such as those generally referred to as “Weblogs” or “Blogs”, that uses a treemap display object in a graphical user interface to represent social networking characteristics discovered in, and aggregated from a set of on-line journals. The generated display object includes on-line journal representations shown within the social network communities to which they belong. This visual organization is provided through a treemap representation, in which an enclosing region for a set of journals is broken up into sub-regions corresponding to social network communities. Representations of individual on-line journals are provided as inner regions within the sub-regions for the communities. The enclosing region, sub-regions and inner regions may be rectangular, or any other specific geometric shape as appropriate for a given application. The relative size of an inner region representing a specific journal may be determined based on how strongly related that journal is to the other members of the community, or on how active that journal is in terms of reads or writes, or based on some other criteria.
1. A method of representing a set of on-line journals, comprising:
detecting social network relationships among said on-line journals;
aggregating said social network relationships; and
generating a graphical user interface display representing said on-line journals, wherein said display includes an enclosing display object within which are displayed at least one sub-region, said sub-region enclosing a plurality of inner regions, wherein each inner region within a given sub-region represents an on-line journal having at least one social network relationship with at least one other on-line journal represented by another inner region displayed within said sub-region, wherein a relative size of each of said inner regions reflects the number of said social network relationships including an on-line journal represented by said inner region and at least one other on-line journal represented by another inner region displayed within the same sub-region.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said enclosing display object, said at least one sub-region, and said plurality of inner regions comprise rectangular display objects.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein each of said on-line journals is associated with at least one author.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein each of said on-line journals includes a user-readable list of links to other ones of said on-line journals.
5. The method of claim 4 , wherein said social network relationships comprise at least one entry in said list of links to other ones of said on-line journals for a first one of said on-line journals, wherein said entry includes a link to a second one of said on-line journals.
6. A system having a computer readable storage medium, said computer readable medium having a computer program for representing a set of on-line journals stored thereon, said computer program comprising:
program code for detecting social network relationships among said on-line journals;
program code for aggregating said social network relationships; and
program code for generating a graphical user interface display representing said on-line journals, wherein said display includes an enclosing display object within which are displayed at least one sub-region, said sub-region enclosing a plurality of inner regions, wherein each inner region within a given sub-region represents an on-line journal having at least one social network relationship with at least one other on-line journal represented by another inner region displayed within said sub-region, wherein a relative size of each of said inner regions reflects the number of said social network relationships including an on-line journal represented by said inner region and at least one other on-line journal represented by another inner region displayed within the same sub-region.
7. The system of claim 6 , wherein said enclosing display object, said at least one sub-region, and said plurality of inner regions comprise rectangular display objects.
8. The system of claim 6 wherein each of said on-line journals is associated with at least one author.
9. The system of claim 6 , wherein each of said on-line journals includes a user-readable list of links to other ones of said on-line journals.
10. The system of claim 9 , wherein said social network relationships comprise at least one entry in said list of links to other ones of said on-line journals for a first one of said on-line journals, wherein said entry includes a link to a second one of said on-line journals.
11. A computer program product having a computer readable storage medium, said computer readable medium having a computer program for representing a set of on-line journals stored thereon, said computer program comprising:
program code for detecting social network relationships among said on-line journals;
program code for aggregating said social network relationships; and
program code for generating a graphical user interface display representing said on-line journals, wherein said display includes an enclosing display object within which are displayed at least one sub-region, said sub-region enclosing a plurality of inner regions, wherein each inner region within a given sub-region represents an on-line journal having at least one social network relationship with at least one other on-line journal represented by another inner region displayed within said sub-region, wherein a relative size of each of said inner regions reflects the number of said social network relationships including an on-line journal represented by said inner region and at least one other on-line journal represented by another inner region displayed within the same sub-region.
12. A system for representing a set of on-line journals, comprising:
a display device;
means for detecting social network relationships among said on-line journals;
means for aggregating said social network relationships; and
means for generating a graphical user interface display representing said on-line journals, wherein said graphical user interface display includes an enclosing display object within which are displayed at least one sub-region, said sub-region enclosing a plurality of inner regions, wherein each inner region within a given sub-region represents an on-line journal having at least one social network relationship with at least one other on-line journal represented by another inner region displayed within said sub-region, wherein a relative size of each of said inner regions reflects the number of said social network relationships including an on-line journal represented by said inner region and at least one other on-line journal represented by another inner region displayed within the same sub-region.