Neat visualization of the internet. It would be great if there was an option for automatically closing each popup when you click on another site (I ended up having lots of open popups). Probably a subjective preference to be honest.

I second that.

Is a Web URL map really an "Internet Map"?

Please, add "2011" to the headline! (see "About" popup)

It's a great visualization, but pretty old for internet timeframe and most have already seen it.

What relation do the positions from one another have?

Seems like Yellow is China, Blue is America, Red is Russia, etc. I don't understand the position of the dots to one another though.

Found this in the about section.

"Users’ switching between websites forms links, and the stronger the link, the closer the websites tend to arrange themselves to each other."

I guess this explains why similiar sites are closer together and why countries happen to be closer together, but not always.

I get really tired of people thinking web === internet.

I was expecting a map of the network infrastructure (i.e. the Internet) but it's an interesting visualisation nonetheless. Was surprised to see how big Yahoo still is considering their market share is pretty constantly derided by the tech press.

Now turn it into 3D (spheres), add an Oculus Rift and get William Gibson's cyberspace (aka Neal Stepenson's metaverse)

Neat. Is the location randomly chosen? Why is wordpress in the middle of nowhere?

There's two bubbles for Wordpress.

Wordpress.org has a bubble very near the center, north-northeast of Google and west of Facebook. It's much nearer the center since that's where all the linking and blogging happens.

Out in the void to the northwest is wordpress.com. This appears to be a freemium service based around Wordpress the software. Presumably this one is far out because there's fewer links and connections to it, and presumably only by those who find the .com first and don't realize .org is the "true" Wordpress home.

There are also multiple bubbles for Google, Yahoo, etc..., it's just how they chose to visualise it. Wordpress.com is fairly popular, but is its own entity compared to Wordpress.org (the only major link is that Wordpress.com was started by a co-founder of the Wordpress project).

I don't think the locations are random. I checked zerohedge.com and all around it were "buy gold" and other end of the world finance sites. Seemed like too much of a coincidence if the sites were randomly mapped out.

Found a lot of web site I have aware of. great.

just clicked a dozen small sites & all were porn..hmm..not surprising I suppose..

Cool!