Visualization of the Week: Amazon book recommendations

Christopher Warnow's viz app reveals the network of recommendations surrounding a book.

How does Amazon get its recommendations right? In part, by tapping into a larger network of those with the same interests and similar purchasing habits.

Christopher Warnow has created a network visualization based on this data and written an app that utilizes the Gephi API. The tool takes a link from a book on Amazon and creates the network surrounding it, with up to 100 recommendations associated with the title.

In honor of the “rhizomatic” structure of this visualization, the following video shows the recommendation network around Deleuze and Guattari’s Marxist classic “A Thousand Plateaus:”

You can download the tool here, which will allow you to watch visualizations unfold in real time. The tool also lets you zoom in and out, and export a visualization as a PDF.

Found a great visualization? Tell us about it

This post is part of an ongoing series exploring visualizations. We’re always looking for leads, so please drop a line if there’s a visualization you think we should know about.

Moving to Big Data: Free Strata Online Conference — In this free online event, being held Dec. 7, 2011, at 9AM Pacific, we’ll look at how big data stacks and analytical approaches are gradually finding their way into organizations as well as the roadblocks that can thwart efforts to become more data driven. (This Strata Online Conference is sponsored by Microsoft.)

Register to attend this free Strata Online Conference

More Visualizations:

tags: , , ,