Navigating the web
How cool is this! I read that some people think this is a totally useless map (can’t recall where) but I reckon it’s pretty funky. Japanese company, Information Architects, has just released its 2007 map, which is basically a journey of web trends. It looks like a map of the London Underground and depicts the 200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective. Mostly, it features English language websites but does include some Japanese, German and Chinese sites.
Click here and check out the map. By placing your mouse over any named site, a pop-up will appear. And the map has been organised to show different “trend lines” - so for example if you follow the Social News Line (dark green), you’ll find Digg, Netvibes, Reddit etc. The rise of political blogs is shown via a thin pink line, so here you’ll find the increasingly influential Huffington Post and Daily Kos sites. The Know How Line consists of sites like Wikipedia, WebMD Health, Answers.com and Yahoo Answers.
Apparently, there are some insider jokes embedded in the map, which may require a good knowledge of the Tokyo transit system. But I did find this one amusing: “Google has moved from Shibuya, a humming place for young people, to Shinjuku, a suspicious, messy, Yakuza-controlled, but still a pretty cool place to hang out (Golden Gaya)“.
Made in Australia
