We’ve looked at social networks extensively in the class, but mostly looked at isolated instances of social interactions within groups or organizations. Much interest lies in how social networks actually shape our society and the world around us. They Rule examines the elite who manage Fortune 500 companies and connects them to each other and the organizations they also sit on, such as the Council on Foreign Relations or the New York Stock Exchange. The site then, of course, tries to get you to take political advocacy after seeing the interconnectedness of big business with government and monetary institutions.

For our purposes, however, it is just interesting to use their elegant interface to explore the ties between people and find the degrees of separation, etc. The “load maps” feature shows a multitude of pre-drawn graphs showing connections such as the half of the J.P Morgan-Chase board dubbed the “Magnificent 7″ — for obvious reasons once you see the fan of connections going to everything from PepsiCo to Halliburton and everything in between. This is an example of social networking at its best: seeing how the connections between people could literally be used to control the business world and beyond.

They Rule - http://www.theyrule.net/