Social Graphing

I mused last year whether we'd see Web 2.0 style entity-link-property visualizations, alla swivel, and today macroscopia arrives. The UI builder looks superficially similar to Yahoo pipes, and it uses a radial layout animation very similar to one I mentioned earlier. Try this for size.

The interaction with the graph feels good - the animation preseves context, is smooth (flash based implementation) and I like the graying of content away from the centre. It is only really good for local link exploration though - no zoom and no other layouts mean the big picture remains elusive.

Some simple search functionality might help for navigation too.

I can't help thinking one thing wrong with this is the complexity in getting the data in - it just isn't easy for your average user to grasp. Putting a good step-by-step goal focused UI on this part would make a big difference.