Monday, March 31, 2008

Heatmap: Facebook Users by State

What with Google's Chart API coming out, and then more recently getting an update to include neat map visualizations, I decided to give it a go and see what I could do with it.

This was what I could do with it:



This is a heatmap of Facebook's popularity by state, based on number of Facebook users in each state (gleaned from Facebook's targetted ads page, as before) per the state's population (2007 estimate courtesy of Wikipedia). Raw data is in this Google spreadsheet.

The top state is Massachusetts (nearly 1 in 7 people!), not surprisingly, but it's interesting to see mostly plains states rounding out the top five (Kansas, South Dakota, Minnesota and Missouri).

Honestly, I expected a lot more "heat" along the coasts, and not nearly so much in these generally "red states."

I guess it's the crippling tedium of these plainest of states that entice people to go online to find entertainment. What do you think?