Thursday, June 19, 2008

Map of the Week-Mapping Web Trends

Information Architects Japan produces this map of web trends. In their own words:

"The map pins down nearly 300 of the most successful and influential websites to the greater Tokyo area train map. Different train lines correspond to different web trends such as innovation, news, social networks, and so on."


I've spent a fair amount of time looking over this subway map of Tokyo for the similarities and they're not obvious. However, there is a detailed description of the various lines and the how changes in web traffic affect the placement of sites.
Here's a description (and map) of google's recent promotion to Tokyo's central station.

"In terms of traffic, Tokyo station is the center of Tokyo. That’s why Google (which is slowly becoming a metaphor of the Internet itself) has moved from Shinjuku to Tokyo Station. Google continues to push new modules into the main lines in an attempt to occupy the center circle."
Hey look! Blogger's on there! Maybe Map of the Week will earn its own station someday!

2 comments:

Michael5000 said...

This seems more a LIST or a VENN DIAGRAM than a SUBWAY MAP sorta thing.... Also, it makes me feel dumb with all of these websites I don't know....

Anonymous said...

The reason you couldn't see the similarity between the Information Architect's map and the subway map is that the Information Archietects map isn't based on the subway it's based on the Japan Railways (JR) commuter train map. See page 3 of the JR pdf
http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/pdf/pamph_welcome.pdf